What a sad day it is for each and every person who has ever listened to and enjoyed a song by Michael Jackson. I didn't expect to see headlines on TV that read "Michael Jackson Dead At 50" today. I guess the boy who never wanted to grow old never really did. Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, is now immortal through his music.
I'm not even sure where to begin. I woke up in the morning only to watch Larry King have Celine Dion on the phone giving her thoughts on Michael Jackson's passing. What a wake-up call; it shocked the sleep right outta' my system. It was so shocking that, in all honestly, there was very little sadness. Not because I wasn't sad, but because it's still hard to digest that there's footage of MJ's body being taken into an ambulance. Who would've thunk, right? Now I'm not going to go into Michael's troubled life or his alleged criminal records. Unlike so many of those who were 'close' to him who will no doubt give their supposed condolences to CNN over the next week or so, I have honestly never cared about who Jackson was behind the curtains. I could care less about what people accuse him to be. All I knew was his music was inspirational, and he showed people what good music sounded like.
"Dangerous" was my first ever pop album on cassette. It was my first ever cassette, actually. I've played that thing so many times that the tape actually snapped! And although my taste for music has lead me away from pop and into the metal scene, I have and always will make exceptions when it comes to the King of Pop, and I'm sure anyone who has ever listened to his beats can't help but at least tap their shoes when one of his songs starts to play. I know I do.
Like so many have said before, the music industry today is fragmenting as we speak. And although it's a natural act of evolution, it's also the reason why we will most likely never have another Sinatra, Elvis, or Michael Jackson. I guess today really does mark the end of an era with the passing of the last great music icon. With a quarter of a billion albums sold over the course of his life, Michael Jackson will never be forgotten as he has sealed his mark in the history of modern music.
There's not much more to say. It's funny how just last week I was watching his popular "Dangerous" concert in Bucharest from 1992 and thought to myself, "God I wish this guy would make just one more solid album", despite knowing that he was in bad shape. The irony of it is Michael Jackson announced just recently that his world tour starting July 8 would be the official curtain call. It looks like there is no real curtain call for MJ. People will always crave that one last performance to no end.
Controversial to the core, weird, sometimes insane, a solid entertainer, a phenomenal dancer, and one heck of a musician. Michael Jackson was the definition of a superstar. I'm sure the guys in Heaven are cheering at the sight of a kickass Moonwalk right now. I think I'm in unison with the world when I say "thank you for the bombastic costumes, the white gloves, the zippers and crotch-grabs, the 70degree bends, the moonwalks, the tiptoe-ing, the weird stories, the hats, the awesome dance moves, the expensive and extensive videos, the fantastic concerts, and of course...the phenomenal, iconic, definitive, distinctive, sense of music".
Goodbye, Michael Jackson. Rest In Peace. You will most definitely be missed.
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Today also marks the passing of Farah Fawcett, one of the original Charlie's Angels. Farah was 62 when she succumbed to cancer. I never really got to enjoy Farah's films during her prime as I wasn't even born yet, but I've been keeping up with her progress and have heard and read a lot of good things about her.
Rest In Peace, Farah.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Goodbye, Michael Jackson. And Thank You For The Music.
Transformers : Revenge Of The Fallen (2009) | REVIEW
Director : Michael Bay.Writers : Ehen Kruger, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman.
Cast : Shia LeBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Peter Cullen, Hugo Weaving.
Rating : Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi action violence, language, some crude and sexual material, and brief drug material.
Runtime : 150minutes
Tagline : Revenge Is Coming.
This Flick Is About....
Two years after the first movie, Sam Witwicky is ready to go to college and resume life as a normal teenager. His hopes are thwarted when the evil Decepticon forces return to Earth on a mission to take Sam Witwicky prisoner, after the young hero learns the truth about the ancient origins of the Transformers. Joining the mission to protect humankind is Optimus Prime, who forms an alliance with international armies for a second epic battle.
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Two years after the first movie, Sam Witwicky is ready to go to college and resume life as a normal teenager. His hopes are thwarted when the evil Decepticon forces return to Earth on a mission to take Sam Witwicky prisoner, after the young hero learns the truth about the ancient origins of the Transformers. Joining the mission to protect humankind is Optimus Prime, who forms an alliance with international armies for a second epic battle.
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REVIEW
Oh God, where do I even start with this one. Transformers : Revenge Of The Fallen is by far the biggest blockbuster of 2009. It will be the first to surpass the $300mil mark and will go on to make tons of cash despite the sour reviews and fanboy lashing that it has been on the receiving end of. Let's just say Revenge Of The Fallen (TF2) is a "good news, bad news" deal. Let me start with the good news first.
Warning : Minor spoilers follow.
The good news is that if you wanted more action in a Transformers movie, then you've been delivered a shipload of nonstop pound-for-pound action, explosives, and Megan Fox in TF2. There's no slow moments, there's no stopping for a break. The action starts at the very beginning (I'm not kidding when I say the very beginning!) and does NOT stop until the credits roll. So if that's what you wanted, it'll be delivered on a silver platter via Revenge Of The Fallen. Is non-stop action a good thing for me? That's like asking a male if he has testosterone. Of course it is! But, and this is a major but, I'm also a fan of proper writing and storylines. I'll get to that later. Now for more good news.
The CGI and FX were insane (in a very good way)! A lot of people told me that the trailers looked too colorful for their own good and I even sensed a bit of 'cartoon' influence when I saw the bright, colorful posters but the CGI in the flick is amazing. It is beyond realistic and if you thought Michael Bay would weasel his way through this one with a lot of night-time action scenes, you're wrong because most of the flick takes place during broad daylight, which makes it even cooler. One of the things I like about Bay is that his 'worlds' are massive in scale. He doesn't contain his movies in one place. The characters travel great distances across contrasting environments and in Michael Bay's world, even the Transformers look small when taken from his chosen angles. It's stuff like this that makes Bay's work (and the dozens of animators and compositors behind computer screens, burning their eyes out) look hyper-realistic.
What else is good? Optimus Prime and the dozens of other robots that make their mark in this flick. The fight scenes with Optimus are so intense that it's hard not to want to rewind that scene in the cinema and watch it again! Or at least wish that there was 10 more minutes added to that fight scene. Either one would work.
Of course there's also Megan Fox. How could anything with the words Megan and Fox in them possibly be bad? Unless Fox refers to 20th Century Fox that is. How could anything with the words 20th and Century possibly be good?
The soundtrack for the film is decent. I liked the score from the first movie way more, but I'm not complaining about this one either. Linkin Park, however, need to buck the **** up! I used to actually like these guys at one time. Seriously, you can do better than New Divide, Shinoda!
Now *sigh* on to the downsides of Transformers : Revenge Of The Fallen. I hate to say this but there's more downsides to this flick than I expected. First, the writing is all over the place. Unlike the first movie which is neatly composed and smoothly delivered, TF2 feels rushed, choppy, and downright messy. Due to the infamous Writer's Strike, Orci and Kurtzman were forced to finish the script in time for shooting to commence; hence the screenplay which feels like it's 5 stories mashed together as one. The movie itself feels terribly rushed. I'm not sure if the headfirst dive into the action from the very beginning was intentional or just Bay's way of covering up for lack of story. I don't think so and / also speaking of which...
...there's too much story in Transformers : Revenge Of The Fallen. Yup, you read that one right. A Michael Bay movie with too much going on. This is what happens when people keep hounding the poor fellow for character development and proper plots and whatnot. Here's what you get for saying that Michael Bay is only good at blowing s**t up! He gives you a story that revolves around the humans with a lot of character development and emotion and halfway deep storylines, and just like everything else he does, he gives you a bombastic amount of it! It so happens that when you force Michael Bay to tell a decent story, you create a catastrophe. What has happened in TF2 is that there's too much buildup from too many standpoints and most of them end up being irrelevant.
For instance... Sam's 'going-off-to-college' is built up to the point where you think it's a massive deal, only to find out that that part goes to waste because he's forced to leave college not even halfway through the film. There's a small-sized Decepticon bot that Megan Fox 'trains', forces to spill information, and then it's never seen again. We see a hot-as-hell female chick turn into a Cybertronic robot-being with a tongue as a whip with the tip still being a fleshy tongue only to find out that nobody cares to explain how Transformers can suddenly take human form. Nobody in the film even seems to give a rat's behind about those details. So if the robots can take human form, why not just hide as humans instead of large vehicles? There's also the part where Optimus narrates about how the Autobots have been working with the secret organization NEST over the past two years to hunt down the remnants of the Decipticons. That's all good but he also mentions that they are still in hiding, kept in secret from the world. Wait just a minute ... didn't these giant robots have an all-out war in the first film? If all methods of spreading the news fails, doesn't word of mouth count? Or YouTube for that matter?
I could go on. Megatron is apparently the disciple of The Fallen as it is revealed in TF2. And it's because of this that the Decipticons have been searching Earth all this time; to recover a way to avenge The Fallen's defeat and see his rise once again. It's funny how nobody mentioned anything about this Fallen fellow in the first flick. Not even a hint.
There's also the fact that there was way too much comedic relief in the movie; so much to the point where it lacked seriousness even at dire moments. And Ramon Rodriguez? (plays Sam's roommate, Leo) I compare him to a vacuum cleaner. Why? Because the guy can suck and blow at the same time (and this is in the most insulting and non-sexual way). Halfway through the movie I was hoping that a Decepticon would blast his head off but unless this is Friday the 13th, we all know that the funny guy never dies. Speaking of comedy, there are the Twins, Mudflap and Skids, two Autobots who constantly try to beat each other into a pile of scrap metal. I like them, a lot even. Problem is a huge number of people don't and have compared the duo to Jar Jar Binks and Wato from Star Wars. That's like comparing something to piles of garbage. There's also the issue of the twins speaking in a horribly racist ghetto accent. Not to mention that they mention more than once that they're not the smartest of Autobots to begin with. *sigh* Not very smart on your side, Mr.Bay.
The biggest downside, however, comes via the part where there's too much of a spotlight on Sam Witwicky instead of any one of the Transformers. Optimus shares some amount of the attention but others like Ratchet, IronHide, and even Bumblebee get so sidetracked that they seem like the guest stars in their own film. Emphasis on Megatron is scarce and the only real character buildup is Starscream's. This is what made the movie feel badly disconnected. The first film revolved around the arrival of the Autobots and them resuming their battle with the Decipticons and the resurrected Megatron. TF2, however, deals with the comeback of one bitter Fallen. Yet, it feels as though Sam's story and life is more important to the world than that of the Transformers and their quest to protect our planet from a force that wants to destroy it. In the rush of all things, it seems as though the titular characters of the film aren't given enough development.
The acting wasn't bad, though. Shia really gave his best in my opinion. Megan Fox...all she had to do was be hot. What annoys me is that she's found a way to keep her white pants perfectly spotless and her lipgloss from fading even though she's spent a lot of time in the simmering desert, running through small villages that are being blown up...constantly. Megan, you always seem to impress me. In all seriousness, the acting was more than decent. You've gotta' give the guys credit. It isn't easy showing that much emotion on set when you've got nothing to work with except a greenscreen and your imagination. Sure, it was easy to do when you were 4. But as you grow the world becomes more logical and realistic. You realize that maybe that cardboard box isn't a rocketship. Or there are no dragons. Or Belle from Beauty & The Beast may just be a cartoon, not a real person who you can fall in love with and marry and have babies with! Maybe people at Disney just draw those things and you can't really meet Belle unless it's some hag at Disneyland trying to be her! It's not the kid's fault, damnit!
Back to story...
TF2 is far from logical. You should have guessed that when you saw giant robots on the poster. It's a sci-fi gig. Nevertheless, there are plotholes the size of ancient pyramids themselves. There are continuity errors from the first flick, there's change in character for some of the Decipticons (or just Starscream who shows more resemblance to the cartoon now), and there's just too much going on to begin with. A simple story with twists and turns would have done the trick. I, for one, never complained about the first Transformers not having enough story. For all the people who did, this is all your fault! Why'd you have to go and send Bay violent messages? Still, there's no reason for you not to go watch Revenge Of The Fallen.
Optimus Prime alone is worth the show. There's enough eye-candy in there to last you the entire two years before Transformers 3 comes out (rumored 2012). The fight scenes are amazing and the long climatic end is everything you could ask for from a robot war. It's an all-out fight to the finish. The movie's ending seems rushed for some reason but like I said, it had poor writing to begin with. Bay wanted to speed up Transformers 2 and I guess he didn't completely comprehend the consequences that would follow.
With that said, and in a shocking revelation, I'm going to say that I loved Transformers : Revenge Of The Fallen. Sure, there were plotholes. There were major **$#ups. It was a messy movie. But I enjoyed it a little more than Watchmen and Terminator Salvation and way more than X-Men Origins Wolverine. For some reason I can't seem to hate the Transformers. I had my fun and I'm definitely planning on giving it a second go. Maybe even a third. I can't wait for the third flick, which I'm sure will be the best of the trilogy. I'm not a major Transformers fan so I might not know how good or bad Bay is at retaining details, so forgive me if I'm ignorant. If I were to give you some advice I'd say "Turn your brain off, don't bother about technical details, love the Autobots, hate the Decipticons, and enjoy the whole damn show!"
Wrap I give Transformers : Revenge Of The Fallen a 3.3 out of 5.0. I would have given it a higher rating if they hadn't messed up the storyline so much. It gets a 3.0 because it does what films were meant to do from the start; deliver a good time at the movies. Revenge Of The Fallen is the definition of a popcorn film and it isn't out there to win any Oscars for Best Film. It's out there to give you some fun, blow stuff up skyhigh, and make a lotta' money! With that said, I'm about to book tix for my next show. Roll out!
Warning : Minor spoilers follow.
The good news is that if you wanted more action in a Transformers movie, then you've been delivered a shipload of nonstop pound-for-pound action, explosives, and Megan Fox in TF2. There's no slow moments, there's no stopping for a break. The action starts at the very beginning (I'm not kidding when I say the very beginning!) and does NOT stop until the credits roll. So if that's what you wanted, it'll be delivered on a silver platter via Revenge Of The Fallen. Is non-stop action a good thing for me? That's like asking a male if he has testosterone. Of course it is! But, and this is a major but, I'm also a fan of proper writing and storylines. I'll get to that later. Now for more good news.
The CGI and FX were insane (in a very good way)! A lot of people told me that the trailers looked too colorful for their own good and I even sensed a bit of 'cartoon' influence when I saw the bright, colorful posters but the CGI in the flick is amazing. It is beyond realistic and if you thought Michael Bay would weasel his way through this one with a lot of night-time action scenes, you're wrong because most of the flick takes place during broad daylight, which makes it even cooler. One of the things I like about Bay is that his 'worlds' are massive in scale. He doesn't contain his movies in one place. The characters travel great distances across contrasting environments and in Michael Bay's world, even the Transformers look small when taken from his chosen angles. It's stuff like this that makes Bay's work (and the dozens of animators and compositors behind computer screens, burning their eyes out) look hyper-realistic.
What else is good? Optimus Prime and the dozens of other robots that make their mark in this flick. The fight scenes with Optimus are so intense that it's hard not to want to rewind that scene in the cinema and watch it again! Or at least wish that there was 10 more minutes added to that fight scene. Either one would work.
Of course there's also Megan Fox. How could anything with the words Megan and Fox in them possibly be bad? Unless Fox refers to 20th Century Fox that is. How could anything with the words 20th and Century possibly be good?
The soundtrack for the film is decent. I liked the score from the first movie way more, but I'm not complaining about this one either. Linkin Park, however, need to buck the **** up! I used to actually like these guys at one time. Seriously, you can do better than New Divide, Shinoda!
Now *sigh* on to the downsides of Transformers : Revenge Of The Fallen. I hate to say this but there's more downsides to this flick than I expected. First, the writing is all over the place. Unlike the first movie which is neatly composed and smoothly delivered, TF2 feels rushed, choppy, and downright messy. Due to the infamous Writer's Strike, Orci and Kurtzman were forced to finish the script in time for shooting to commence; hence the screenplay which feels like it's 5 stories mashed together as one. The movie itself feels terribly rushed. I'm not sure if the headfirst dive into the action from the very beginning was intentional or just Bay's way of covering up for lack of story. I don't think so and / also speaking of which...
...there's too much story in Transformers : Revenge Of The Fallen. Yup, you read that one right. A Michael Bay movie with too much going on. This is what happens when people keep hounding the poor fellow for character development and proper plots and whatnot. Here's what you get for saying that Michael Bay is only good at blowing s**t up! He gives you a story that revolves around the humans with a lot of character development and emotion and halfway deep storylines, and just like everything else he does, he gives you a bombastic amount of it! It so happens that when you force Michael Bay to tell a decent story, you create a catastrophe. What has happened in TF2 is that there's too much buildup from too many standpoints and most of them end up being irrelevant.
For instance... Sam's 'going-off-to-college' is built up to the point where you think it's a massive deal, only to find out that that part goes to waste because he's forced to leave college not even halfway through the film. There's a small-sized Decepticon bot that Megan Fox 'trains', forces to spill information, and then it's never seen again. We see a hot-as-hell female chick turn into a Cybertronic robot-being with a tongue as a whip with the tip still being a fleshy tongue only to find out that nobody cares to explain how Transformers can suddenly take human form. Nobody in the film even seems to give a rat's behind about those details. So if the robots can take human form, why not just hide as humans instead of large vehicles? There's also the part where Optimus narrates about how the Autobots have been working with the secret organization NEST over the past two years to hunt down the remnants of the Decipticons. That's all good but he also mentions that they are still in hiding, kept in secret from the world. Wait just a minute ... didn't these giant robots have an all-out war in the first film? If all methods of spreading the news fails, doesn't word of mouth count? Or YouTube for that matter?
I could go on. Megatron is apparently the disciple of The Fallen as it is revealed in TF2. And it's because of this that the Decipticons have been searching Earth all this time; to recover a way to avenge The Fallen's defeat and see his rise once again. It's funny how nobody mentioned anything about this Fallen fellow in the first flick. Not even a hint.
There's also the fact that there was way too much comedic relief in the movie; so much to the point where it lacked seriousness even at dire moments. And Ramon Rodriguez? (plays Sam's roommate, Leo) I compare him to a vacuum cleaner. Why? Because the guy can suck and blow at the same time (and this is in the most insulting and non-sexual way). Halfway through the movie I was hoping that a Decepticon would blast his head off but unless this is Friday the 13th, we all know that the funny guy never dies. Speaking of comedy, there are the Twins, Mudflap and Skids, two Autobots who constantly try to beat each other into a pile of scrap metal. I like them, a lot even. Problem is a huge number of people don't and have compared the duo to Jar Jar Binks and Wato from Star Wars. That's like comparing something to piles of garbage. There's also the issue of the twins speaking in a horribly racist ghetto accent. Not to mention that they mention more than once that they're not the smartest of Autobots to begin with. *sigh* Not very smart on your side, Mr.Bay.
The biggest downside, however, comes via the part where there's too much of a spotlight on Sam Witwicky instead of any one of the Transformers. Optimus shares some amount of the attention but others like Ratchet, IronHide, and even Bumblebee get so sidetracked that they seem like the guest stars in their own film. Emphasis on Megatron is scarce and the only real character buildup is Starscream's. This is what made the movie feel badly disconnected. The first film revolved around the arrival of the Autobots and them resuming their battle with the Decipticons and the resurrected Megatron. TF2, however, deals with the comeback of one bitter Fallen. Yet, it feels as though Sam's story and life is more important to the world than that of the Transformers and their quest to protect our planet from a force that wants to destroy it. In the rush of all things, it seems as though the titular characters of the film aren't given enough development.
The acting wasn't bad, though. Shia really gave his best in my opinion. Megan Fox...all she had to do was be hot. What annoys me is that she's found a way to keep her white pants perfectly spotless and her lipgloss from fading even though she's spent a lot of time in the simmering desert, running through small villages that are being blown up...constantly. Megan, you always seem to impress me. In all seriousness, the acting was more than decent. You've gotta' give the guys credit. It isn't easy showing that much emotion on set when you've got nothing to work with except a greenscreen and your imagination. Sure, it was easy to do when you were 4. But as you grow the world becomes more logical and realistic. You realize that maybe that cardboard box isn't a rocketship. Or there are no dragons. Or Belle from Beauty & The Beast may just be a cartoon, not a real person who you can fall in love with and marry and have babies with! Maybe people at Disney just draw those things and you can't really meet Belle unless it's some hag at Disneyland trying to be her! It's not the kid's fault, damnit!
Back to story...
TF2 is far from logical. You should have guessed that when you saw giant robots on the poster. It's a sci-fi gig. Nevertheless, there are plotholes the size of ancient pyramids themselves. There are continuity errors from the first flick, there's change in character for some of the Decipticons (or just Starscream who shows more resemblance to the cartoon now), and there's just too much going on to begin with. A simple story with twists and turns would have done the trick. I, for one, never complained about the first Transformers not having enough story. For all the people who did, this is all your fault! Why'd you have to go and send Bay violent messages? Still, there's no reason for you not to go watch Revenge Of The Fallen.
Optimus Prime alone is worth the show. There's enough eye-candy in there to last you the entire two years before Transformers 3 comes out (rumored 2012). The fight scenes are amazing and the long climatic end is everything you could ask for from a robot war. It's an all-out fight to the finish. The movie's ending seems rushed for some reason but like I said, it had poor writing to begin with. Bay wanted to speed up Transformers 2 and I guess he didn't completely comprehend the consequences that would follow.
With that said, and in a shocking revelation, I'm going to say that I loved Transformers : Revenge Of The Fallen. Sure, there were plotholes. There were major **$#ups. It was a messy movie. But I enjoyed it a little more than Watchmen and Terminator Salvation and way more than X-Men Origins Wolverine. For some reason I can't seem to hate the Transformers. I had my fun and I'm definitely planning on giving it a second go. Maybe even a third. I can't wait for the third flick, which I'm sure will be the best of the trilogy. I'm not a major Transformers fan so I might not know how good or bad Bay is at retaining details, so forgive me if I'm ignorant. If I were to give you some advice I'd say "Turn your brain off, don't bother about technical details, love the Autobots, hate the Decipticons, and enjoy the whole damn show!"
Wrap I give Transformers : Revenge Of The Fallen a 3.3 out of 5.0. I would have given it a higher rating if they hadn't messed up the storyline so much. It gets a 3.0 because it does what films were meant to do from the start; deliver a good time at the movies. Revenge Of The Fallen is the definition of a popcorn film and it isn't out there to win any Oscars for Best Film. It's out there to give you some fun, blow stuff up skyhigh, and make a lotta' money! With that said, I'm about to book tix for my next show. Roll out!
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