Movieblaze

Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Tyrese Gibson, Josh Duhamel, John Turturro

Director: Michael Bay

Writer(s): Ehren Krueger, Roberto Orci

Cinematography: Ben Seresin

Original Score: Steve Jablonsky

Running Time: 147 Mins.

Michael Bay is a director who will never gain the kudos he truly deserves, much like Scorcese, Tarantino and Eastwood he is an auteur, stamping his own distinct style on each film yet very rarely garnering anything but scorn from critics. There have been a couple of exceptions, The Rock for one, but his work is largely overlooked as bombastic and overblown with no substance behind the style. While this is true to an extent and he has had some major misfires, Pearl Harbor and The Island for example, he always brings the goods in the action department with an eye for on-screen destruction matched by no other. For this alone he deserves much more respect and recognition, for action is surely the most crucial thing to get right in an ACTION film.

In 2007′s Transformers Bay took a toy franchise and made it into one of the most visually spectacluar filmic experiences ever, the first time we saw Bumblebee change from car to robot, you couldn’t help but gasp in awe, and again and again throughout that first experience, if there was a flaw it was that there simply wasn’t enough robot on robot action. Roll forth two years and we have the inevitable sequel, there are now innumerable Transformers, good, bad and indifferent, and at least two thirds of the over-long running time is crammed full of robot on robot…(and often) on robot, action.

But what of plot and characterisation, well Sam (LaBeouf )and Michaela (Fox) are simply given the hook that they need to declare that they love one another, that’s it, that’s  their story this time round, but hey, when Fox looks this good, who cares! New characters are brought in, Sam’s room mate is as annoying a stock character as you can get, though thankfully he is teamed up with the returning Agent Simmons (Turturro) who gives the human’s a little personality. As with the Transformers themselves Duhamel and Gibson seem to have been brought back simply to make up numbers, in the creation of a force to seek and hunt down the remaining Decepticons on Earth (a plotline which would, incidentally, have made a much better film overall).

Plot though really is insignificant, as it pretty much covers the first film’s story albeit from a slightly different tac, extending it to breaking point in order to accomodate more and more of the titular robots. It may sound like I am knocking the film for making improvements but there is often just TOO much happening, theres no doubt this is action of the finest calibre, but the Transformers themselves have little to no character development meaning we lose any empathy we have for anyone, at least first time round the characters were recognisible.

There are exceptions however, and some are given more time to “shine” than others, Optimus makes the most of his bookending scenes, and in the climax particularly you will be cheering him on, even if it isn’t out loud! Given the most time seemingly is a defective Decepticon with the same teleportation powers as the Fallen himself, old and rusty he creaks and walks using a ”cane”, making him the most fun to watch and the most interesting, purely because the audience is given the time to get to know him, while favourite characters such as  Bumblebee (who inexplicably still has no voice) is paired with the two most annoying characters to grace celluloid since Jar Jar Binks! Mudflap and Skids, the goofy and most racially obnoxious robots ever, theirs is the biggest mis-step in an otherwise thoroughly enjoyable, but shallow, romp.

I say mis-step because any other failings are a given, weak plotting, a lack of character development, the totally cheesy moments set against the usual Bay skylines, all something that Bay’s other films have in spades so to critisize for this is to thoroughly miss the point. Example, witness the Devastator sequence, 7 smaller “constructicons” combine to form the ultimate Transformer, the sand sucking behemoth seen in trailers, as he scales the pyramids we see the iron balls he has hanging down, funny, slightly, crass, almost certainly, Bay-esque…hell yes, and action film fans will love it! 

Which brings me full circle, is Bay an auteur? Yes, of the action genre. Is this one his best efforts? Not by a long shot, it is however as action packed a film as you will see all year, that I will guarantee, just don’t expect anything more. 

VERDICT

Love it or hate it this is “Total Bayhem” indeed, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is everything you would expect, with the action bigger and better and character development still absent in any form, with an extra slice of cheese for added measure… but come on, you already know what to expect when you buy the ticket!

Zombieland, tipped as the American Shaun of the Dead, has arrived online in trailer form. Check it out here. The splatstick horror comedy stars Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, and Bill Murray.

The gory story sees a group of lone survivors after a zombie holocaust, travelling coast to coast across the United States, and holing up in an amusement park. It looks a lot broader than Shaun, with more emphasis on action (lots of guns, no cricket bats) but it still looks a lot of fun, with Harrelson in particular on charismatic gung-ho form. Tantalisingly, Murray isn’t obviously featured in the preview clip, suggesting an attempt to keep his role as a surprise.

This is Eisenberg’s second Land of the year, after the very different Adventureland, and the second horror comedy of his career: he played a teenage werewolf in Wes Craven’s 2005 Cursed.

When 28 Days Later came out, writer Alex Garland talked about what he felt was the unacknowledged reaction of many viewers to zombie-armageddon films: the feeling that it would be brilliant to be practically alone in an empty world. That totally seems to be the vibe here, and we say bring it on!

Released in October, for that extra Hallowe’en frisson. 

We’ve been teased before with teasers, but a full trailer for Roland Emmerich’s latest disaster CG-fest, 2012, has just gone up at Yahoo. (with a little intro from the director).

It’s nothing to do with Arthur C. Clark or Stanley Kubrick, but instead based on a Mayan prophecy that the world will end at the 2012 solstice. Hey, that means we’ll miss Batman 3! But it truly does look spectacular: we’ve got avalanches, floods, an eclipse, mass suicides, forest fires, what looks like a meteor strike, earthquake, and an airlifted giraffe. And is that LA falling into the ocean? Bill Hicks would be delighted!

Whether that spectacle translates into a decent story is another matter. Emmerich’s CV has often made for great trailers and so-so movies: ID4, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow… And let’s just forget the Apocalypto-lite 10,000 Years BC. Please.

John Cusack is on hand though, which bodes well, and the cast is pretty strong: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt, Woody Harrelson, and Danny Glover as the US President.  

Let’s hope it’s a disaster epic, rather than an epic disaster. Find out in November.

USA Today has published some gorgeous new images from Tim Burton’s new Alice in Wonderland project, underway at Disney.

Available for your hi-def perusal is concept art showing Johnny Depp as a wall-eyed Mad Hatter; Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Hathaway as the Red and White Queens; and glimpses of The White Rabbit, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and Alice herself.

That character list should give you a clue that this is not quite a straight adaptation. While the Hatter and the Rabbit are from Lewis Carrol’s barking 1865 original story, The Tweedles and the Queens are all from 1871 sequel Through the Looking Glass (the Queen in the first book is the playing card Queen of Hearts, not the chess piece Red Queen, although reports that Bonham Carter’s version is fond of crying “off with their heads” and has a moat full of bobbing skulls, suggests an amalgamation of the two).

The tweaked story takes pace ten years after Alice’s first visit to Wonderland, of which she has no recollection. Fleeing from a society party, she stumbles back down the rabbit hole and is co-opted by the creatures into a revolt against the crimson monarch.

Forty days of shooting was actually completed last December, with the intervening time devoted to animation, FX, and 3D-isation. Alice is played by Australian newbie Mia Wasikowska. Also on hand – in some form or other – are Christopher Lee as the Jabberwock and Alan Rickman as the Caterpillar, Stephen Fry as The Cheshire Cat, and Crispin Glover as The Knave of Hearts.

The release date for Alice In Wonderland is currently next March.

David Fincher’s follow-up to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button could be Columbia’s upcoming Facebook project The Social Network. 

I hoped that might mean a techno-thriller about someone who pokes the wrong guy and ends up tagged in a top 5 deathlist, but disappointingly it seems just to be a biopic of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and his creation of the online phenomenon that can now boast over two hundred million members.

It’s intriguing to wonder what a bleeding-edge visionary like Fincher might see in the idea. Perhaps he’s looking for something smaller and less vastly complex following the awesomely ambitious FX of BB, although there’s certainly some potential drama in Zuckerberg’s falling-out with Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra, who claimed via lawsuit that he stole their idea.

Aaron Sorkin has written the script, and Kevin Spacey’s production company is behind the film, with plans to start shooting later in the year. We thought about making some sort of “Kevin MySpacey” joke, but decided it was beneath us.

Just when you thought the Oscars ceremony couldn’t possibly get any longer, the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences today announced plans to increase the number of films in the Best Picture category from five to ten.

“Having 10 Best Picture nominees is going allow Academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories, but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize,” said Sid Ganis, president of the Academy.

There’s a general feeling that the Academy has taken this decision in the wake of heavy criticism over the exclusion of The Dark Knight from last year’s Best Picture race. There was also some speculation that the Best Animated Feature category might now be cancelled as a result, with the wider field allowing Pixar films, for example, to enter the running.

But that category remains, with Ganis claiming that the expansion was also taken as a way to return to the Oscars’ roots – the first 16 Academy Awards all featured more than five Best Picture nominees. The last ceremony to do so was in 1943, when Casablanca won the big prize.

“The final outcome, of course, will be the same – one Best Picture winner – but the race to the finish line will feature 10, not just five, great movies from 2009,” added Ganis. “I can’t wait to see what that list of ten looks like when the nominees are announced in February.”

Well, one thing’s for sure – Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen won’t be on that list, unless they expand the category to include 1000 films. And probably not even then.

What’s Movieblaze’s feeling on this? Well, it’s hard not to feel that this is purely a cosmetic change, and something of a condescending one at that; a way of patting films like The Dark Knight on the head and saying, ‘see? You made it to the final ten! Well done! Now run along and play, while the real movies vie for the big award’. After all, the argument is clear: if a film didn’t get enough votes to make the top five nominations, then it doesn’t stand a chance of winning.

But maybe we’ll be pleasantly surprised. After all, you’ve got to be in it to win it, and had The Dark Knight been in the running last year, things may – just may – have been slightly different.

One thing’s for sure, though: with ten Best Picture nominations to get through, bring a cushion for next year’s event. You’re going to need it.

Richard Kelly Makes Straight Thriller Shock! The Box, adapted from a short story by Richard Matheson (I Am Legend, Duel) stars James Marsden and Cameron Diaz. Check out the super-tense new trailer here. Isn’t that the theme from Saw?

The writer-director of the awesome-as-it’s-supposed-to-be Donnie Darko, and the what-the-hell-is-it-supposed-to-be Southland Tales (he also wrote the screenplay for Domino) has clearly had a career re-think following Southland’s production problems and box office disappearance. If this trailer is anything to go by, the self-indulgence has been truly reigned in, leaving something leaner and more focused in its place.

Which is not to say it doesn’t look as if there are some nicely bizarro touches in there. We like the Father Christmas / train wreck snippet particularly, although we’re less convinced by the CGI splodge on Frank Langella’s face.

The story was adapted once before, in 1986, as a Twilight Zone episode. The movie’s angle seems to be a melding of Indecent Proposal and The Game: normal life unravelling following the offer of a million dollars, no questions asked, if you push a button that kills a stranger (it was $50k in the story: that’s inflation for you). It also feels – in a good way – a little like the premise from Brian Azarello’s 100 Bullets comics, although obviously Matheson’s story pre-dates them by 30 years.

So do we welcome Kelly to mainstream Hollywood, or do we lament the fact that, for the time being, his crazy indie pics are on hold? One thing’s certain: this ought to be better than s.Darko…

It’s been a darn good summer for Ryan Reynolds thus far – he’s been in two big hits, The Proposal and X-Men Origins: Wolverine… well, I think he was in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

But with a Deadpool spin-off in the works, and audiences going down on one knee for The Proposal, Reynolds’ star is as high as it’s ever been. And rightly so, too, for he be awesome. And to prove it, he’s decided to parlay his newfound starpower not into a mega-budget, blockbusting behemoth, but a low-budget indie with a very intriguing premise.

Buried will see Reynolds virtually attempt a one-hander (steady, ladies) as a civilian contractor who gets kidnapped while in Iraq, and wakes up in a coffin with only a mobile phone, a candle and a knife for company. The movie will focus almost entirely on Reynolds’ character as he attempts to keep his mind intact while figuring a way out of his predicament.

Sounds pretty damned sneaky, like a politically pertinent Saw movie, hopefully with the creepiness and ingenuity of that series’ earlier entries, and without the overwhelming awfulness of the later episodes. Oh, and claustrophobes are going to hate it.

But it should also stretch Reynolds to the limit, and one thing’s for sure: nobody’s going to wonder if he’s in this movie after the credits have rolled.

Rodrigo Cortes will direct the movie, which starts shooting this month in Barcelona. With virtually one location – that coffin – any set visit’s going to be a little cramped. Which means that sound you can hear is Our Helen scrambling to book her flight.

Christian Bale has confirmed that shooting on The Fighter, David O’Russel’s biopic of boxers Dickie Eklund and ‘Irish’ Mickey Ward, is about to get underway. Bale is Eklund, with Mark Wahlberg co-starring as Ward.

The beleaguered project began with Darren Aronofsky at the helm, and was originally to star Matt Damon in the Eklund role. Damon was reportedly then replaced by Brad Pitt, until Aronofsky dropped out, leaving the movie in limbo. Marky Mark however, has always been aboard, and has been gaining his boxing chops for two years.

The Fighter certainly has plenty of real-life drama to work with. Eklund’s professional career lasted a decade between the 70s and 80s, and he went the distance with Sugar Ray Leonard in 1978. He went on to become his half brother Ward’s personal trainer, persuading him back into a successful career in the ring after his early retirement.

But Eklund was also hopelessly addicted to crack, and was jailed for kidnapping and armed robbery in 1995. He was arrested for crack posession again in 2006, and yet again earlier this year for domestic assault and attempted murder. So we’re apparently looking at Rocky crossed with Chopper and Requiem For a Dream. Can’t wait!

“He lived a very hard life,” said Bale, in perhaps the understatement of the week.

At the same press conference for Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, Bale professed ignorance about the future of his two major franchises: Batman and Terminator.

“I’m none the wiser about whether we’ll ever be revisiting Gotham or not,” he told the assembled hacks. “I really cannot tell you if there will be another Batman movie.” This chimes with recent reports that Christopher Nolan is reluctant to continue with the caped crusader’s exploits, although the series is such a cash cow for Warners it would be incredible if there weren’t further instalments in some form.

And as for Terminator: “Really, no. No conversation has been had about that at all…”

Hollywood remains convinced that there will one day be a film, based on a videogame, that doesn’t suck – and with that eternal optimism in mind, has lined up Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune for a screen adaptation.

The story of the game sees adventurer Nate Drake, a descendant of Sir Francis, set out in search of the lost city of El Dorado*, a clue to the whereabouts of which he believes he has discovered. The quest is complicated by a rival treasure hunter, and the emergence of mutated descendants of Spaniards and Nazis (presumably they’ll try their best to wipe you out mañana).

Kyle Ward’s been hired to write the script – he’s recently worked on upcoming game adaptations Kane & Lynch and Hitman 2 (yes, that film spawned a sequel). The film’s being produced by Avi and Ari Arad, and Charles “The Dark Knight” Roven. As for casting, may I respectfully suggest Stargate Atlantis’ Lt. Colonel Sheppard (Joe Flanigan) who’s a dead ringer for the game’s Drake?