Review: Transformer & Transformers Revenge of the fallen

Transformers 2007
Director Michael Bay
Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro

Revenge 2009
Director Michael Bay
Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro

Remember the old Saturday morning cartoon about robot that change into cars jets and trucks? Robot in disguise! remember? Well even though I was captivated by animation, I found the whole concept of transforming robots too big of a "suspension of belief" to swallow. And if they were alien robots, why did they have stupid names like Autobots and Decepticons? Decepticons? Hey they all changed into cars and stuff! And Optimus Prime? Who thought of these names? So you can see, I was not a fan of the cartoon, and transferred that to the movies.

I decided to watch both movies back to back just to get an idea of the CGA and see why they movies were so popular. In the first movie, rival autobot (autobots?!!!) try to discover the whereabouts of an ancient cube that will allow the Autobots to once again populate their war devastated world. Their only clue to its location is a pair of glasses etched with the location and belonging to the lead character Sam.

The observation that comes to mind with the first movie is that Bay took himself and the movie way too seriously. Perhaps overcompensating for the fact that he is making a movie about Saturday morning cartoon characters. While the action sequences are spectacular, the dialogue is ponderous as the robots are large and verging on dogmatic. Heavy handed comes to mind quite easily. The only person who seems to be camping their character is Turturro.

Bay telegraphs the movies climax that you are left wondering why he drags it out so long.

The movie is by the numbers geeky guy in high-school, buys car (or whatever) that has weird powers, and is drawn into a conflict way beyond what he ever expected and (I swear I am not giving anything away) becomes the hero in the end. Star Wars anyone? Harry Potter? Back to the Future?

The film is diverting, the action is good, the DVD has bupkus for special features.

So lets talk about Revenge of the Fallen

And Bay loosens his sphincter and quite possibly has fun with Transformers 2. The movie is for all intents a carbon of the first. The hero is tired, dispirited and wants nothing more than to have a normal life, but is pulled back in by the original conflict.

With the last movie, we were lead to believe that the Autobots on Earth were fighting the few Decepticons left but since the cube was destroyed there was little left to fight about. But now there are shards! No Kidding! Who woulda thought! Kidding aside, Revenge is just plain more fun. Nowhere near as heavy handed as the first. Humor and campiness is in ready supply. If anything, Turturro is allowed to run wild with his character and that alone would have been worth the price of the movie. He brings to life this maniacal conspiracy theorist recluse living with his mother in a New York deli. He can deliver a line like "remember the sacrifices I have made for my country" and make that and other one liners something especially funny. The action sequences are if anything even more spectacular. You completely buy into 50 foot robots beating the crap out of each other on busy city streets. The plot is no less formulaist than the first movie, but the humor quite literally ties the move together and keeps the flow going. Scenes like the little demon decepticon that changes into an RC truck? Found that he could switch sides, clings to the girl friend's leg and then pantomime some pretty rude behavior. Sam says..."you do realize what its doing to your leg right?" and the girl friend replies "yeah, but he is so cute!" all done with a falsetto voice saying things like "oh yeah, who's your daddy now?" and "oh you like that don't you!" I know...bathroom humor but it demonstrates a director willing to have fun and be a bit less pendatic with his material. I know I laughed.

So if you have been sitting on the fence with this DVD, the movie is entertaining enough to make at the very least a rental worth it. But forget about any extras. If there were any, I couldn't find them. Which means I guess I am seeing a trend now. No one it seems is bending over backwards to make the DVD value added anymore. It really is a shame because that is how the format was promoted. You could have so much more than what a vhs could offer. The commentaries, deleted scenes, trailers what have you. Perishingly few DVDs seem to be offering anything anymore.

LHC down again!

From Dvice blog I read that the large Hadron Collider is again offline. However this is no magnetic ring losing containment no this time it was caused by something almost beyond comprehension!

Would you believe a piece of bread? I am not making this up, one of the world's most complicated machines was brought low by a bread crumb. Oh and it gets weirder! The crumb did not come from a careless workman, sandwich in one had and a welder in the other, no - said crumb was thought to have been dropped by one of our feathered friends.

From the article:

• The morsel found its way into the doomsday device's outdoor machinery, sparking a temperature differential that triggered an automatic shutdown sequence....

It shouldn't hurt the schedule too much, but it is going to take a couple of weeks getting the LHC restarted.

What newborn weighs a billion tons a spoonful?

A new born Neutron Star does. Neutron stars, the ultra dense remains of a collapsed super giant star after going super nova. The neutron star is so compacted by immense gravity that all of an atom's components are crushed into the atomic core and those neutrons so dense that a square centimeter weighs millions of tons.

A new neutron star has been observed for the first time. Just 330 years old the star has been located in the supernova nebula Cassiopeia A. It's age isn't the most unusual part either. It's just 12 miles across.

And it gets stranger! From the article:

• This neutron star was born so hot that nuclear fusion happened on its surface, producing a carbon atmosphere just 10 centimeters thick.

Read more: at Mail online

Wana buy Gareth Powel's The Last Reef? You name your price!

Hey do you remember that great story that Gareth Powel let me read for Beam Me Up called "The Last Reef"? Well if you have forgotten it, let me remind you. It was about a man who goes to Mars to find out what happened to the woman that he loved very much. When he gets there he finds that she was one of a very small group that has "joined" with a computer communications system that has become self aware. What's more she has managed to walk out and remain virtually unaffected.
Anyway, the story evolves to the point where to save the girl, the sentient system and himself, he must join the machine as well. Not everything is as it appears though and I am not going to ruin the ending.

Why I am bringing this up is that this story is in the collection "The Last Reef & Other Stories" that was originally published in hardback and paperback by Elastic Press in August 2008. It contains 15 short stories, and received great reviews from Interzone, Prism, Sci-fi Online, and The Fix. (here is a link to the reviews ) and now if you would like a pdf of this book Gareth tells us that you can go to his page and make an offer!!!

If you're interested or want more information, you can click on this page link here

Abandoned Towers November Update

Happy November!

Here in Texas the weather has finally decided that summer is almost over. We've actually had a few cool nights and mild days. Wonder how long that'll last?

Texas is a country of extremes it seems, with weather that stays confused. But at least we don't have earthquakes. Yet.

Abandoned Towers #4 is packed full of all sorts of goodies you don't want to miss. The third print issue of 2009 (and the last one for this year) is now available to purchase. We've created a nice flip book preview for you at http://atprintissues.blogspot.com/

Once you finish looking through it, you can scroll on down the page and find previews of all the other issues as well as the first annual Artist's Challenge Anthology. The second challenge'll kick off in Dec... but more on that when it gets here.

Now, here's a taste of what's waiting for you in issue #4:

Starting with the front cover with is a very cool painting by M.D. Jackson based on the featured story, A Warm Welcome By Rob Mancebo. Here's an excerpt:

Looking down the ugly barrels of that bartender's scattergun sort-of made me reassess my craving for a drink.
"Are you planning on going hunting, ol' hoss?" I inquired politely of the whiskered gent with the cellulite collar at the other end of that twelve gauge.
"Naw, I think I done found what I was looking for," he replied with an irritating amount of smugness in his voice.
I looked around the Number One saloon like some sort of an idiot. It was vacant except for him and me, so it was pretty obvious just who he thought he'd found.
"Say now, you couldn't be hunting me." I wasn't overly articulate because the business end of that sawed-off shotgun looked as big as a pair of stove pipes!
I was sure ready to try to talk my way out of getting my head blown off so I added, "I haven't been in town long enough to bruise nobody's feelings."
"We hang thieves in this country!" he informed me with a wave of that shotgun. "Drop them guns and hoist your hands!"
I hadn't a clue as to what he was talking about. I put my hands up, then remembered he'd told me to drop my guns so I began to lower them again, at which point he objected in the crude vernacular such as a body is liable to hear in saloons.
"Well do you want I should drop these Colts or not?" I demanded.
"I'll get them," he came around the bar in a huff and put those cavernous barrels under my nose while he fumbled at my left-hand gunstock. It was something of a tactical error on his part. When he glanced down to find that gun, I dropped my left hand across the action of his shotgun and took hold.

Other fiction pieces include Recall by Shawn Scarber, The Final Wave by TW Williams, Penderfyn's Goal by David M Pitchford and Central Park by Badley H. Sinor.

In issue #4 you'll also find a nice selection of poems such as Forgotten Friendships: A Voice of Arthur Pendragon by Chad Weiss and Goya’s Painted Faces by John William Rice.

Nonfiction articles include a short piece by Lyn McConchie that discusses the creativity of New Zelanders entitled Number Eight Wire and a scrumptious set of recipies that Jaleta Clegg calls Sherezade's Repast.

Remember you will never find anything that's in one of the print issues online, so if you don't want to miss out on all this coolness you gotta buy the issue.

Don't wait. Don't put things off. Get several copies and give a few as gifts. You can purchase AT #4 at http://www.comixpress.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1525