Review: Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen

If it don't blow up, make it!

Oh god, it’s that time of the year again, the sweltering heat, the undeniable urge to run out of the city, the lack of air conditioning and of course the million dollar budget movie with no plot whatsoever.

Fulfilling this years requirement for the latter is Michael Bay’s Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. With critic reviews as scathing as they come in this business Revenge proves to be critic proof, the huge success of the first film and the legion of die hard fans of the cartoon series ensured that this film would be a huge success but, what did that mean for the idea that the movie would be banal and without any REAL substance? It meant of course it was true! Michael Bay is able to take a relatively good story of intergalactic war into a two and a half hour orgy of explosions, kiddie jokes and some off-‘colour’ (pun intended) humor. Revenge of the Fallen is a movie that doesn’t try to be any better than a series of high gloss special effects and moment after moment of over the top self righteous explosions.

The action is high paced and never ending making it at least purely a summer action movie and at best an annoying two and a half hours of Shia lawhogivesadamn running around trying not to get killed (probably both in character and as himself) from Michael Bay’s Myriad of explosions.

The story is almost nonexistent, following some crazy idea that Sam (Shia Labouf) has miraculously incurred the location of a hidden gem the Transformers hid in Egypt some umpteen million years ago. All to stop the first Transformer known only known, cryptically, as “The Fallen” (now the name has a double Meaning!) from reactivating a machine that will blow up the sun and give the Fallen energy to do something that is inevitably not good for any of our hero characters and something something something….darkside.

Its amazing how much this film can try to beat out a plot that’s not there, symbols and military units and Transformations that seem like a lego factory has exploded right before your eyes. The film doesn’t take time to pace itself at any point, its gratuitous CGI effected fight scene after gratuitous CGI effected fight scene. Its all fun in the start because the CGI is horribly good but, after two hours of almost non-stop explosions you kinda want a moment of peace and quiet to take in all the chaos Michael Bay has constructed (if one can accuse of him of actually having a plan in this movie)

The acting is…well its Shia Labauf and Megan Fox in the leads so this isn’t going to be Citizen Kane, they’re acting which is good but, not very well which is…bad. Most of their lines consist of screaming the others name  I can imagine the screenplay for this film: “SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!”  Yells Megan Fox “MikaelAAAAAaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” yells Shia, then the biggest Effin Explosion you’ve seen in your LIFE! The supporting actors…support, though they’re useless to the nonexistent story anyway so who really gives a damn?

Despite having a weak story Michael Bay manages to pull out an amazing feat…With almost no story he completely riddles his movie with the most GAPING plot holes this side of 2007’s Premonition. There are stark inconsistencies from the first movie, and then further continuity issues within the film including but, not limited to, characters suddenly disappearing, entire scenarios changing for no reason, and iffy effects. Anyone who can coherently explain the details of this film must be so strung out on Ritalin that even Limbaugh would be in awe.

I won’t go into details but, Revenge of the Fallen isn’t the worst movie ever made, the action is still fun but, not enough to save the film. Its a summer movie and don’t go in expecting to be engaged in a story driven plot. This is Michael Bay’s “Kiss my ass” moment to all of his united nay-sayers, its hard to believe that in this day and age a movie with nothing going on can cost millions of dollars and make it back within a few days, it goes to show you that no matter how sophisticated we get at telling stories, we’re still just cavemen entranced by fire.

Grading:

Story: C –

Action:  B+

Music: B-

Acting: C

Overall: C-

Skip it if you really can, the ten to twelve bucks you’d pay are better used on buying yourself a train ticket to somewhere where this movie doesn’t exist.

R.I.P. Micheal Jackson

Yesterday We Lost Micheal Jackon…

It hurts me because he was ahuge chunk of my childhood and I know in my heart he served the world in the best way he could. Some of the Hateful comments floating around on the internet have shocked me and I find my fellow human is not even worthy of the breath in my body to bad mouth them.

If only we had spent more time remembering the great things he did instead of the unproven terrible things he did not do.

I feel totally lost right now.

I miss You

and i hope that message floats into the eternal infitneness of the internet and somehow finds its way to its destination.

Stab, Dig, Twist Repeat…

So I’m sitting here listening to all the sad songs I can. Is it therapy? You be the Judge.

It’s funny how as a smart human being I can result to all sorts of emotional and mental torture on myself. I’ve had this guy be hopelessly in love with me for years, it’s all I ever wanted and once I got it I treated it like my bastard stepchild. I had this other guy not give care at all about me and I showed him respect attention and love, I’ve had this other guy tread water somewhere in the middle and I hopelessly threw myself at him. So what’s the result in the end?

The First guy is slowly starting to not feel the same about me, of course

The second guy is happily moved on

and the third guy is in turmoil about in the same love I am with him, just someone else.

It’s a good novel waiting to be written but, it has to take a backseat to the one I’m trying to write right now. I’m just really exhausted, I’ve been to all of these places more than once before. I watched the guy who loves me suffer by my hand, I tried to make it better but, something in me keeps pulling in an adverse direction, perhaps it’s insatiability? Maybe I’ll grow out of it?  I watched the guy who couldn’t care less about me walk out on me like I was never there and that’s no surprise, and I’ve watched the guy in the middle go through everything I go through with him with someone else. Yet I stay there because I care about him and I want to support him, I want him happy but, when he’s so adamant about loving someone else sometimes me virtuousness is beaten into a pulp and left to the side of the road.

Now either you’re saying “you poor thing”, “I’ve been there” or “This is what you get” and depending on your answer the next few thoughts will appeal to you in different ways.

At this point I’m thinking maybe I should really just stop everything. the guy who loves me has come to this wierd acceptance of my faults in these situations, they don’t please him at all but, to him I’m nothing but someone who can’t help but lie and cheat and be lost in someone elses’s sauce. So while it’s endearing that he’ll be there in my imminent turmoil it’s not endearing that  he doesn’t have faith in me anymore. He shouldn’t have faith in me at all, doesn’t make it any much easier.

And sensible person getting punched in the gut would block or move or in some way try to avoid the damage. Not I, I have to get punched in the gut, I have to be the fool to keep listening to stories of him being in love with someone else and wanting someone else, I have to keep letting the knife drive deeper and TWIST. Because somewhere down the line this has become the normal ‘good’ thing for me.

I don’t really feel bad for myself, I could easily end this situation, what upsets me is that I really love(d?) this guy a lot and all I wanted really was for him to feel the same way. We hung out, we talked, we said it to each other but, there was no admission there from him. I said it all he just kind of agreed and got by in ways, and now here I am looking like the fool again. Ignored the one I had for the one I couldn’t have. I didn’t even care if didn’t date, it was not about that, I just wanted him to love me in that way too, so I could know that I don’t keep misplacing my chips but, I guess I was wrong, sure he has feelings for me but, no matter what kind of unconditional love and support I threw at him it wasn’t going to make him love me more. You can dictate that kind of shit you know, it just comes and goes.

Then again maybe I wasn’t ever generous, maybe all my exploits for him were selfish because I wanted reciprocation in the end. I wanted him to take those things and love me similarly, that kind of want for personal gain doesn’t ever work right does it? Its a hybrid of selfishness but, deep down it’s always going to be selfishness isn’t it?

I suppose I come to a point where I’m either going to say I’m going to get over this guy once and for all and accept that there’s no chance for a future for the two of us. You know you dream maybe we’ll be friends and mature enough to understand our complicated situation and live through it with a shrug and a laugh but, I don’t know now I don’t think I’m that good of a person, I don’t think I’ve got the mental capacity to accept that I could spend time actually loving a person for no real reason or possibility of likewise affection. Its as if I built a building and no one wants to live in it, what good is it? might as well tear it down.

“Why are you so focused on this guy? what about the other guy who, you say, loves you?”

Good question my faithful reader(s)

Well, I don’t know to be honest. Its not an ‘I don’t know’ like I don’t know if I love him. I know I love him but, there was never a closure between me and the other guy, so I suppose this is just like residual dust settling and now it’s time to clean up. What’s happening should be closure on the situation, sometimes I wish he would just say “Listen I don’t love you, I like you, you’re cool, but I’m not in Love with you!” as much as that would shatter me into pieces, then it would be final and clear and I could just die a little more and re piece myself over time.

The choice I have now is: Suffer the consequences of watching him love someone else or jettison him from my life. Not an easy choice, which is, in ways, ironic because he’s faced with the choice between two guys that he likes (neither of them myself, ofcourse) and I’m faced with two options about him that’ll either break my heart or break my heart, and he think he has it bad!

As of now it looks like I’m going to Catch the Pretenders at Summer Stage NYC August 10th, that’s good, if the former wasn’t happening I’d probably be doing a dance around the house. I’m sure I’ll be very excited when the time comes.

I’m going to see Distant Worlds: The Music Of Final Fantasy this upcoming Saturday, so that’s awesome, this is something I’ve dreamed about for quite a long time and it’s going to be wonderful.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen will be on Friday, not looking forward to the film but, I’m going with my Ex-boss / Good friend so I’m happy to be going anywhere with him.

I suppose it isn’t all too bad. I’ll live.

Happy Father’s Day too…for those of you who are and have.

High Hopes, Bigger Dreams, Larger Failures…

So I got this friend who likes this girl…

Prefacing any conversation with those words almost ensures a horrific mind-bending, heart wrenching story, and I don’t think this one will disappoint but, before I go into my very good friends, very bad situation I’d like to share some other things with you.

First of all bought Final Fantasy VII in the Playstation store and have begun to watch a friend play it, He’s seen Advent Children and played Crisis Core but, never actually played VII itself. I’m playing slightly ahead of him to keep tabs on things to gain and see, I just finished the Junon boat to Costa Del Sol portion when you fight Jenova for the first time. I hadn’t realized how great this game was, even with the old 97′ graphics the game is still as interesting as its  next generation counterparts. Its really interesting to see how exactly the story reads both in the order that they were released and the actual time-line, sure there are a few inconsistencies but, for a game so complicated and made with so much back-story the games follow each other closely and interestingly. Initially I had the fear that being spoiled with my PS3 and the great graphic success of Crisis Core and Advent Children I wouldn’t be as into the game as I would want to but, rest assured it’s still that interesting.

Second, I finally finished the first part of my anticipated long fan Fiction for Tekken. I had put off writing it for some time because I wasn’t in the mood and I didn’t have my essentially coffee and/or tea to write with but, something came over me and I neatly concluded the first twelve pages of the story, which deal with Heihachi’s life 35 – 27 years before the first Tekken. Writing as characters who we only see in short one minute CGI scenes and a series of 90 second fights was easier than I thought, Tekken made its story very ripe and writing out the characters was no problem thanks to that. What was hard was figuring out what to write about, there’s only a few select events that happen before the first Tekken yet, the bulk of what happens in the games is created by events that the player doesn’t see before the first Tekken. So writing it out and pacing them in a strict time-line became an ordeal after a little while. There are still a lot of things I have to explore and characters that have to be introduced like Kazuya and they have to be done in a way that’s going to be true to their characterization in the resulting Tekkens and in a way that ages them appropriately but, that’s what I stepped into this project willing to do, so now I have to do it. Also I was initially concerned with making original characters, I wanted this story to be as close to the games as possible so introducing a entirely new character who is never seen in the games felt like a risky thing for me but, in final I’m enjoying the two characters I’ve created their important enough so that creating wasn’t like a random thing to do but, don’t participate in Tekkens. The two characters both have interactions with Heihachi so it puts them in the middle of the action at some point and they’re working on either end, one as an ally and one as an enemy. I hope I finish this, I have this habit of not  finishing stories because I have no discipline in my life but, I really want to finish this and in the ultimate dream i’d love for this to be taken in by Namco or Bandai and perhaps seen as an official novelization.

Gosh, what a big dream eh? I wouldn’t even know how to approach getting something like that to happen but, I love the story and I really do think that it could be the official story, there are some differences in the story but, it all fits in to the game’s story in new intricate ways.

Ok…

So I got this friend who likes this girl…

and I can tell he really likes her and she really likes him but, she lives with this guy who sounds less than favorable. Essentially the guy is a pothead who is verbally abusive to her and very controlling. His lack of motivation has put a third of the rent in the red and now they’re being faced with eviction. My friend instantly jumped at the chance to offer his home to her in case she needed someplace to be a noble but, ill-fated thing to do in my opinion. For a few months she seemed to be unsure of what to do, naturally, but recently she came to her senses and decide she was going to move in with him. Herein lies my issue. She’s been getting evicted for months but, instead of being proactive and trying to keep her apartment she continues to work on the weekends only and accepting modeling jobs here and there, which, clearly, isn’t enough to pay the entire rent. Sure the pothead needs to get off his ass and work but, if I wanted to continue to have a roof over my head I’d try just about anything to achieve that right?

She hasn’t, appeared, to have tried anything new, she’s just allowed herself to get evicted and then making the obvious choice to move in with my friend and I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with that. I love my friend and I want him to do the right thing, and the last thing I want to happen is for him to be taken advantage of. They’ve agreed to get into this living arrangement with the idea that they’re not going to continue on developing feelings for each other, and to me that’s not possible. If you like someone you can’t move in with them and live with them and somehow avoid the romantic feelings.

As I see it they’re pushing their friendship to a breaking point, she’s not independent enough to live on her own so moving her into his place just doesn’t seem to be the right idea, she can’t be a mooch he deserves more than that. Now I’m not judging her, I’m just looking at the possible outcomes. The idea that he’s going to save her is a nice one but, what if something happens where they decide they don’t want to live together anymore? Plenty of people who like each other move in together and realize that it’s not at all what they imagined and decide to spilt up. She doesn’t have anything so she can’t move out, so now he’s stuck in a position he doesn’t want to be in and that’s not fair.

I just wish that she’d show a little motivation and would have attempted to get another job or try to find another roommate before crashing at his place, it would have shown that she has some Independence and can be trusted to pull her wait but, letting herself get evicted and coming to his place seems like the easy way out which contains no responsibility whatsoever.

Of course in the end I hope this is one of those rare occasions when I’m wrong. I want him to be happy but, not at the expense of common sense.

Here’s the link to my fanfiction.net page: Covington’s Fan Fics

Here’s a Link to the Jenova Birth Battle: J-E-N-O-V-A

The Pretenders Announce another North American Tour

Still breaking it up

In addition to the European tour for Break Up The Concrete the Pretenders have announced another dose for fans state side. They will be touring with Julliete Lewis and Cat Power. Shows before 8/4 won’t include Cat power or Juliette Lewis.

June 12 – Stockholm, Sweden – Where The Action Is (on sale)

June 13 – Oslo, Norway – Norwegian Wood festival (On Sale)

June 14 – Bergen, Norway – Grieghallen (On sale)

June 17 – Helsinki, Finland – Kulttuuritalo (on sale March 30th)

June 19 – Aarhus, Denmark – Train (info)

June 21 – Stuttgart, Germany – LKA Stuttgartl (On Sale)

June 22 – Berlin, Germany – Kesselhaus.(on sale)

June 23 – Hamburg, Germany – Laeiszhalle (on sale)

June 25 – Freiberg, Germany – Zelt Musik Festival (on sale)

June 27 – London, England – Hyde Park Hard Rock Calling (on sale)

June 28 – Den Haag, Holland – Parkpop Entry is free

June 29 – Paris, France – Elysée Montmartre (on sale)

July 1 – Madrid, Spain – Sala La Riviera (on sale)

July 2 – Benidorm, Spain – Plaza de Torros

July 3 – Cordoba, Spain – Teatro Axerquia

July 4 – Lorca, Spain – Plaza de Ciudad

July 5 – San Feliu, Spain – Spai Port

July 6 – Tenerife, Spain – The Auditorium

July 8 – San Sebastian, Spain – Kursaal Theatre (on sale)

July 10 – Aix les Bains, France – Festival Musilac (on sale)

July 11 – Zottegem, Belgium – Rock Zottegem (info)

July 12 – Charlbury, Oxfordshire, England – Cornbury Festival (on sale)

July 14 – Glasgow, Scotland – ABC (on sale 15/04/09 9.00am)

July 15 – London, England – Shepherds Bush Empire
Pre-sale 16/04/09 – General sale 17/04/09

July 16 – Liverpool, England – Summer Pops 09 with Squeeze
On sale 17/04/09

July 17 – Henham Park, Suffolk, England – Latitude Festival (on sale)

8/4-5, Rama, ON (Casino Rama)

8/7, Wallingford, CT (Chevrolet Theatre)

8/8, Hampton Beach, NH (Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom)

8/9, Asbury Park, NJ (Stone Pony Summerstage)

8/10, New York, NY (Central Park Summerstage)

8/12, Boston, MA (Bank of America Pavillion)

8 /13, Upper Darby, PA (Tower Theatre)

8/14, Washington, DC (Warner Theatre)

8/15, Harrisburg, PA (The Forum)

8/16, Columbus, OH (LC Pavillion Outdoor)

8/18, Chicago, IL (Aragon Ballroom)

8/20, Council Bluffs, IA (Harrah’s Council Bluffs- Stir Cove)

8/22, Littleton, CO (Denver Botanic Gardens at Chatfield)

8/23, Salt Lake City, UT (Red Butte Garden Ampitheatre)

8/25, Troutdale, OR (Edgefield Ampitheatre)

8/26, Vancouver, BC (Malkin Bowl)

8/27, Redmond, WA (Marymoor Ampitheatre)

8/29, Saratoga, CA (The Mountain Winery)

9/1, Pala, CA (Pala Casino — Starlight Theater)

9/3, Los Angeles, CA (The Greek Theatre)

9/4, Rancho Mirage, CA (Agua Caliente Casino)