 | ||
 |
 | |
 |
 | |
 |
 | |
 |
 | |
 | HOME | |
Established A.D. 2000, March 19. Now in our eighth calendar year!Number 381 (Vol. 8, No. 28). This edition is for the week of July 9--15, 2007.
| THIS WEEK'S MOVIE REVIEW by Mike Smith |
| MIKE'S RANT by Mike Smith |
"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"
Proud Pop .... What??? (Top 10 Horror Films) ....Get In Line Now .... Break A Leg .... Doesn't She Watch The News? ... Speaking of Weird Couples .... Whatever Happened To -- ? Chapter 24: Roy ScheiderOn Readers' Comments Launch
Hitmonster
It Came From The PO Box
Summer Peak
Transformers
In case anyone's wondering, in order to keep management hassles to a minimum, while each weekly issue's comments will be archived on that page permanently, the section will not continue to be interactive. I'm sure you can appreciate what could happen if eventually several hundred pages are archived with interactive pages. There isn't time enough in the world to monitor something of that magnitude. Instead, I encourage new readers who, through Google or whatever, find an older article of interest, to write a Letter to the Editor or post to the Message Board.
Hitmonster Summer's Peak Transformers I recognize it had a very successful opening weekend, but not a record-breaking one I don't think (especially if by "weekend" you include the 6 days counting from the 4th of July, but whatever). I went in really wanting to like it, to make it worth the wait and the hassle of mediating Message Boards wars over this.
Out of 2½ hours running time, there is an accumulated 15 - 20 minutes or so, collected from various parts of the movie, that are about the coolest things I've ever seen, as faithful to the source material as practical, exciting, and even downright moving. The photography of the action scenes including the army, the robots, the bunkers, etc., is stunning. The CGI effects of the robots could be considered groundbreaking. The fact that some of the robot/cars did not match their TV characters' incarnations I found easy to ignore.
The rest of the film is a total letdown. The script is a mess. The emphasis on Shia LaBeouf (la BOOF? la BUFF?) and his teen angst/dating problems made me want to wretch. His slutty girlfriend and him were a bad match (and not in the way intended I don't suspect). There is WAY too much comedy (sympathizers call this Michael Bay's "sense of humor".....wrreeeeeetch) including a scene at LaBeouf's parents' house with the robots hiding in the backyard that I thought would never end, and a repeated joke having to do with urinating. There are characters introduced that have interesting scenes and are never heard from again (including Kevin Smith as a computer nerd/expert).
Jon Voigt is the sole exception. He OWNS the role of the Secretary of Defense, very into it and believeable, seen throughout the movie and is, what I'd call, the lynchpin performance. John Turturro plays an operative from the top-secret "Sector 7" that, again, shows up and vanishes on cue, basically to hassle LaBeouf. Kind of a waste of a great actor. The English woman who decodes the alien's computer hacking is really good and almost takes center stage many times. There's a guy who arrives very late in the film, another intense covert agent, who's also very good and, with Voigt, basically fine-tunes the next-to-final act for the few scenes he's in.
It is my understanding that the casting of LaBeouf stems from his being some kinda hotshot stud-muffin from earlier Disney series who pre-teen girls go gaga over and who was seen as an attracter for that audience. An audience that wasn't even alive when Transformers was first on television. (An audience too young to know Qatar is in the Middle East, necessitating not one but TWO supers that said "Qatar -- The Middle East".)
The initial feeling I had coming away from Transformers was that the movie had been in the wrong hands. Upon later reflection, it seems obvious that it is a marketing tool, mainly to facilitate product placement for new cars and trucks (particularly the new Chevy Camaro), and to please teenagers. Speaking of product placement, it is with some irony I recall the original Transformers were Hasbro toys (still are) with a TV tie-in.
This had the potential to be a neo-classic. Mike Smith gives the official PCR ratings for movies around here and I'm very happy with that. But if you want to know what I think? 2½ stars.
Note: Before the movie I saw a dandy little trailer that looked almost Transformers-like, with lots of fires, explosions, destroyed buildings, etc., but no title! At the close it merely said "January 2008 from Bad Robot Productions" (A JJ Abrams company). I've now learned it went out to theaters as "Untitled Trailer" and is something of an internet sensation called "Cloverfield". Whether that's just a working title or not I don't know. But it looks cool and is an interesting approach to building buzz.
Readers Comments
Before I get started on this issue's ruminations, let me say "thank you" to all who helped launch the new Readers' Comments section of the Crazed Fanboy homepage last week. It worked out very successfully and I intend to keep it going.
One thing I personally noted on last week's comment section that may have slipped by unnoticed is the day the homepage hitcounter finally reached 200,000 hits! It occured on 7-7-07 (cool!). Now, a reminder for the millionth time: the hitcounter is basically a decoration for this page and only counts the hits to this page, NOT the entire website! This seems to constantly lead to confusion and I've toyed with the idea of abandoning it entirely. The website is hit hard by search engines every month and the hits (when I stopped counting the stats on my former webhost) were in the millions and had been for years. When someone finds an older article of interest, while they may bookmark it, frequently they do not hunt down the Crazed Fanboy homepage afterward. For some reason, I always find that surprising, because I always like to view any site's homepage. But I'm a geek like that. Anyway, I gave myself an "attaboy" over this little milestone. Cheers.
It Came From The PO Box
This week's edition of the PO Box is dedicated to the book Inside Section One, a definitive look at TV's La Femme Nikita, written by Chris Heyn with an introduction by Peta Wilson. Chris is an old friend who became assistant to the executive consultants on the series. Peta Wilson is the actress who played Nikita. Check it out.
I think it's prudent to assume the summer movie season is peaking with the release of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (reviewed in PCR this issue). While I'm still looking forward to Underdog, The Simpsons Movie and Rob Zombie's Halloween (please don't yell at me), obviously the release of the boy wizard's fifth movie outing coupled with the release of the seventh and final Potter book within the same week pretty much clinches it as the pivotal event of this summer. It's all downhill from here.
Speaking of would-be contenders for the movie-event-of-the-summer awards, I finally got to see Michael Bay's Transformers earlier this week. This has been one of the most divisive films for fans to come out of Hollywood in years. To say the choice of Michael Bay as director was controversial would be, if anything, an understatement. Now, PCR's own Mike Smith gave his excellent 3½ star review last week and I don't want to cover old ground, so to catch up quickly on cast, credits and plot synopsis, please read his review before going on. The following are my feelings in brief.
|
Crazed Fanboy dotcom is owned and operated by Nolan B. Canova