Michael Moores comes in to promote his upcoming film, “Capitalism: A Love Story.”

Michael Moore visits – 09-23-2009

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Last Thursday I went to go see the sequel to Transformers. After all the previews and the fact that I actually liked the first, I was very excited to see what would be done with the follow up. I mean, look…the Constructicons actually make Devastator in this one!! How awesome is that?? Well…that’s where the awesomeness stops. Actually, it didn’t even get that far. Let me explain to you all the mistakes that Transformers made this time around. [SPOILERS AHEAD]

WAY too friggin long…
Why did this movie have to be 2 1/2 hours long? I have no clue.

Meaningless, confusing action sequences
Who taught Michael Bay pacing? Clearly nobody did. The battles at the beginning of the film are just as meaningful as the battles at the end. They’re not building toward anything. There was simply no climax. It was just “Argh…smash two robots together.” And really, it kinda looked like that over and over again. Half the time you couldn’t tell which robot was doing what to what other robot. This was the result of two things, horrible editing that had jump cuts lasting all of a second, and…

Horrible character design
I’ll be the first person to defend certain decisions when it comes to redesigning characters from the source material. While I would have liked to see more iconic costumes in the X-Men movies, I understood why they went the direction they did. In the first Transformers movie, I accepted some things and let others slide because it wasn’t TOO horrible. Let’s take a look.

Optimus Prime: He’s pretty much all there. The classic red and blue, the iconic helmet. The flames are a bit unnecessary, but OK, they got most of it. I like it. He’s gonna have the same voice from the cartoon too?? Well then I’m sold!! Let’s move on…

Bumblebee: He’s still pretty much metal and yellow. Not bad. Wait, he’s not gonna be a VW Bug? That’s where his name comes from!! I don’t know about this…

Starscream: Hmmmm…he’s just all metal…no distinguishing color. I hope they don’t do that with any of the other robots or it’s gonna be tough to pick him out. At least he has a shape just like a jet. I can’t see them putting in another one of those. No high-pitched annoying voice?? But that’s what makes Starscream the whiny bitch he is! I’m getting a little aggravated now…

Megatron: OK…WTF?!?! These two things have nothing in common!! It looks like they mashed up tin foil and said, “Alright, good enough.” He doesn’t look like Megatron, he doesn’t sound like Megatron…and he’s gonna turn into a jet-like space-shippy thing?? I understand not doing the gun, but at least in some forms they had Megatron turn into a tank. (Fortunately he did briefly in the sequel) That’d make more sense, but ANOTHER jet?? He’s got no color either. How do you tell him and Starscream apart in the middle of robot combat when you only see them on screen for mere seconds at a time. Oh…that’s right…you doooooooooooon’t.

Blatant racism
Who’s idea was “the twins”? I can’t say it better than this excerpt from an article on IGN:

In the film, the ‘bots have gold teeth, talk about “popping a cap in [a character's] ass,” and say they don’t read. In my review, I called Mudflap and Skids “the Amos ‘n’ Andy of the Autobots and two of the most offensive characters in recent cinematic history. What were the filmmakers thinking? The ‘it’s just a movie’ defense doesn’t fly on this one, folks; whereas George Lucas had wiggle room to defend himself with Jar Jar Binks, there is none here for Bay and company to fall back on. It’s just too blatant to be deemed anything but obvious and in poor taste. Mudflap and Skids will pull anyone with a half a brain right out of the movie, and they taint the overall viewing experience and prove to be an embarrassment for all involved.” – IGN.com article “Bay Defends Transformers Twins“

Sad, pathetic attempts at humor
How many times are we going to cut to Sam’s parents being goofy? Is that robot humping her leg? Why would it do that, it’s a robot? Wait a second, did I just see robot testicles?? OK, I’m out…officially…done.

The fembot
Hot actress, no doubt. But…if the Transformers could disguise themselves as humans all along, why wouldn’t they all do that?? Sure would make it easier to get around undetected.

The damsel in distress
I’m pretty sure that at some point or another, just about every male character was leading Megan Fox by the hand as they were running from danger. Can she not run fast enough by herself? This gets confusing as they seem to want to make her like a now-typical badass female lead at times, but yet at others whenever trouble comes along someone has to grab her hand and lead her from danger.

I can honestly say that halfway through this movie I was bored beyond belief. I refuse, however, to walk out of movies in the off chance that they improve by the end. This one did NOT, so I had only one thing I could pay attention to to keep myself entertained for the rest of this train wreck…

Surprise, surprise…

I’ve had people bugging me to watch Twilight for awhile now. I’ve had every argument thrown at me like, “you like sci-fi/fantasy/romance movies, so you’ll like this.” To every argument all I had to do was look at all the teeny bopper fangirls and respond, “Eh, I don’t think it’s for me.” Well to those that had been bugging, I finally sat down and watched Twilight, and here are my thoughts…[spoilers coming up...if you don't want anything "ruined", stop reading now]

The production value was not so good. Watching a vampire climb a tree looked like someone put him against a green screen dangling from wires and said, “OK, now just flail your arms and legs a bit. Don’t worry about looking like you’re grabbing something, we’re just gonna stick you over the tree.” I’m pretty sure they used the same exact footage to make it look like the vampire was running in the woods.

BIG screwing with vampire mythology…and not in a good way. In this movie vampires don’t have fangs, can go out in the sun, and have diamond-like glitter skin. That’s right…they sparkle in the sunlight…like a damn fairy. I expected that when Edward stepped into the sunlight he would look ghastly like the images in the legends book, but no…he lit up like a friggin Christmas tree. This clearly was a marketing tool to further attract a female audience. “Oooooooh, look! Diamonds…a girl’s best friend.”

Edward Cullen is a selfish douchebag. You’d think living the life of an immortal would garner a person a little bit more wisdom. Bella’s immaturity is acceptable, she’s 17. Edward follows her around the first half of the movie like a stray puppy…all the while telling Bella, “stay away from me.” Their interactions are awkward and ridiculous. The only reasons Bella is attracted to him is because a) he’s mysterious, and b) he’s a vampire…meaning he gives out subconscious vibes to lure in females…Edward even explains this to her. It’s part of his design to help him get close and kill. If Edward was any kind of decent creature (cause he’s not even human) he’d suck it up and sacrifice what he wants so that he’s never even tempted to kill Bella. That’s what real heroes do…and “romance”? It’s fake!! Like a said before, Bella’s not really in love with Edward. She’s responding to the subconscious vibes she’s getting from his vampire hypno-powers. If Edward simply stayed away long enough, she’d get over it and move on. Everything that happens to her really IS a result of Edward’s selfishness. Of course, in true life-imitating-art fashion, I don’t expect any girl to really agree with me that Edward’s a douchebag. We all know girls love ‘em.

Every vampire romance movie plays with the same dynamic. “I love her, but I have the incredible urge to kill you and I’m resisting as hard as I can.” While this may be an exciting dynamic for some, I hate it. It’s way too uncomfortable to enjoy. I had the same issue with Madagascar…oh yeah, I’m comparing the two. In Madagascar, the lion and zebra were best friends. As soon as they got into the wild, the lion had the urge to eat his best friend. That’s fucked up…really fucked up. It’s no different here. Bella’s willing to deal with it though. (hypno-powers activate!!)

There was ONE enjoyable aspect of the film though…Kristen Stewart’s hot.