Transformers 4: A More Serious Approach on Mass Robot Mayhem

It would seem that Michael Bay may be seeing the error of his ways. I remember by the time that Revenge of the Fallen had found it’s way out of theaters that I would ask questions like- “Why do we need the human characters?” “Can we just have a movie with only Transformers in it?” “Why all the forced toilet humor?” And even though it seemed like Bay had started to tone it down a little and just focus on his craft of blowing shit up, Dark of the Moon still had that wasted human element to it. I liked the character of Sam Witwicky and think that Shia LaBoeuf is a great actor, but after three movies of the character, his parents and his girlfriends, I’m kind of ready for a Transformers movie just about…. Transformers. It seems like the movies are at least 70% CGI with the Autobots and Decepticons onscreen for the majority of the movie so why not just have a movie focusing on their war against one another? I don’t mind the human characters acting as support but I don’t need a lovesick kid running around trying to prove his self worth to everyone.

Now come reports that the next Tranformers movie will still indeed be a sequel to Dark of the Moon, but will feature less comedy and not so many human characters. Josh Duhamel has been pretty candid about the fact that neither himself nor any other actors have been contacted in regards to the fourth Tranformers movie, courtesy of E! Online:

“I don’t think anybody’s doing it,” Josh Duhamel told us last night at the launch party for Sony PlayStation’s new PS Vita portable entertainment system. “I know Shia [LaBoeuf]’s not doing it. I don’t think Tyrese or Rosie [Huntington-Whiteley] or anybody else is doing it.”

“Whenever these movies make that much money they’re going to make as many as they can,” he said. “[But] I haven’t heard anything about it. They haven’t called me.”

 If there were human characters that I didn’t mind, it would have been the soldiers including those played by Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson because they were all business about killing Decepticons and not how their girlfriend thought about their socioeconomic status.

I’d love to see the Autobots engaging the Decepticons on different planets throughout the galaxy as they did on the cartoon and the Transformers animated movie in the 80’s. I honestly doubt that the budget would be affected by having less “real” shooting locations, especially with how much money the studio knows that it’s going to make off the franchise. They could make the fourth movie about Optimus Prime trying to find his inner human whilst also looking for a female Transformer to settle down with and the movie would still gross almost a billion dollars worldwide. We can only hope that Michael Bay remains serious about toning down the cheesiness and five year old humor in his Transformer movies until the movie is finished. Am I expecting some sort of Academy Award winning performance from Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime? No. Nor am I looking for a deadly serious movie with the complexity of something like Inception because we all know that Transformers is a popcorn summer action flick. Just give us something true to the Transformers mythos and we’ll be happy.

Grizzly Review: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

The world of espionage, spies, secrets, and traitors isn’t necessarily what the James Bond movies make it out to be, quite the contrary actually. The car chases, gunfights, sexy sidekicks, and dry martinis aren’t the job. Instead, the world of a spy consists of endless amounts of research, chain smoking, and a lot of talking. The conversations, though, can be as heated, if not even more so, than your run-in-the-mill gun battle.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which is based on the novel of the same name by John Le Carre, follows retired agent George Smiley (Gary Oldman), who must come back to work to find a Soviet spy that is hidden in MI6, nicknamed the Circus. The man in charge, Control (John Hurt), is convinced that a mole is hidden within the Circus after he does some intensive research and studying with information that he’s been given from a reliable source.

The possibilities, according to Control, are “Tinker” who is Percy Alleline (Toby Jones), “Tailor” who is Bill Haydon (Colin Firth), “Soldier” who is Roy Bland (Ciaran Hinds), “Poor Man” who is Toby Esterhase (David Dencik), and “Beggar Man” who is Smiley himself. The beginning of the film reveals that there’s a Hungarian general who knows the identity of the mole. Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong) is sent to retrieve the information, but the mission goes bad, alerting the Soviets of MI6’s suspicion.

This leads Smiley to be forced into retirement by Control, who soon after passes away. Smiley is then brought back and given some very valuable information by a man named Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy), a rogue agent who travels around the world searching for information that may benefit the MI6 during the Cold War. Smiley listens to his story, and considering the failed Hungarian mission, as well as a successful Soviet operation named Operation Witchcraft, he pursues it further, enlisting the help of fellow agent and apprentice, Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch).

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a beautiful, intense, and sometimes extremely confusing spy film that trades in the usual action for something much more effective; edge-of-your-seat dialogue. The constant interaction between the characters keep things more than exciting, and the sometimes puzzling narrative is both saved and clarified by the use of conversation that literally had my heart racing. Gary Oldman’s flawless performance as George Smiley is a cinematic revelation. His calm and collected manner is sometimes eerie considering the situation, and the one time that he does raise his voice, it’s almost enough to frighten the viewer, especially considering the context.

Tom Hardy and Colin Firth are also absolutely amazing as spies who know things that everyone else wants to, but Mark Strong is surprisingly strong in his rather short but extremely necessary role. Personally, I’m a huge fan of his. I think he’s able to adapt to his environment extremely well, with enough diversity to successfully play both a bad guy and a good guy, sometimes in the same movie. It’s Tom Hardy though, that has probably the most screen time in the entire film besides Oldman, which is surprising considering how little he is shown in the trailer, and how far down he is in the opening credits. I’m not here to complain though, after his performances in Inception, Warrior and RockNRolla, he’s most definitely solidified himself a spot in being one of the best young actors in Hollywood today.

The direction by Tomas Alfredson is gorgeously mundane, and I mean that in the absolute best way possible. He recreates the 70s film style so well here that I felt as if I was doing a double feature with Marathon Man. You might recognize his name as being the director of the equally as fantastic vampire love story, Let The Right One In. Alfredson seems to have a knack for creating films with little action that are almost as exciting as a Transformers movie.

The film also plays as a retrospective, taking snippets of certain scenes and placing them in other scenes, which then leads them to go back to that original scene, but instead it moves forward a little bit. This allows the film to literally be a puzzle, with pieces being filled in left and right until the finale where everything is in place and the universal “aha!” moment is reached. Instead of me trying to explain it, think of it as an episode of How I Met Your Mother, how they flip back and forth between the present and other important times that relate to the story being told. You all know what I’m talking about, let’s just move on.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is brutally violent when it needs to be, dryly funny at times, but it’s also a fantastically plotted film that requires quite a bit of attention from the viewer. I’ll be honest, this and Warrior were the only two films of the year where I didn’t look at my watch once to see how much time there was left. For a two hour film consisting mostly of dialogue, that’s pretty damn good if you ask me.

5/5 Grizzly’s

Hero Express: Dark Knight Station – Big Prologue Announcements, Interviews and Possible Spoilers

Welcome to Dark Knight Station, the Hero Express‘s main stop for all the news on The Dark Knight Rises. We’ll keep you up to date on all the biggest bat-news coming straight from Gotham City.

Mind the gap and avoid the shadows; This stop is the Dark Knight Station for December 3rd, 2011.

Official Announcement for the IMAX Prologue – (IGN)

News that a 6-minute prologue of The Dark Knight Rises would play with Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocal at IMAX theatres has been pretty well-known for a while now, with rumours and talk about it going on for months, but now Warner Bros. has cemented it with an official announcement. The full transcript:

“Warner Bros. Pictures’ “The Dark Knight Rises” — the epic conclusion to filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy — is one of the most anticipated films of 2012, but moviegoers won’t have to wait until next year to see the six-minute opening sequence of the film. The film’s prologue will be unveiled exclusively in select 70mm IMAX® theatres worldwide. The announcement was made today by Dan Fellman, President of Domestic Distribution, and Veronika Kwan-Rubinek, President of International Distribution, Warner Bros. Pictures.

The Prologue will be released in North America on December 16, and in the UK on December 21, 2011. Additional international dates vary by territory and will be announced soon.

In making the 2008 blockbuster “The Dark Knight,” Nolan was the first to use IMAX® cameras in a major motion picture release, and, as now, audiences were given an advance look at that film’s prologue months prior to the Summer 2008 opening. Nolan employed the extremely high-resolution cameras even more extensively on “The Dark Knight Rises”—including the film’s prologue—to achieve unprecedented crispness and clarity and a truly immersive experience for the moviegoers.

Christopher Nolan stated, “Our experience on ‘The Dark Knight’ shooting and projecting IMAX 15 perf 65mm/70mm film was inspiring. The immersive quality of the image goes beyond any other filmmaking tool available, and in revisiting Gotham, we were determined to shoot even more of the movie in this unique format. Giving the fans an early look at an IMAX sequence is a great way to draw attention to what I believe will be an incredible way to experience our story when it comes out next summer.””

The prologue is only set to play in select theaters, and the press release includes a list of all the theaters in North America and the UK where it will run, which you can check out at the bottom of the page. Make sure you are somewhere near one of those places when the day comes. I know at the strike of midnight on December 16th I’ll be at Scotiabank Theatre, cape and utility belt ready to go.

‘Akira’ Update – Oldman out, Ken Watanabe Might Be In

A quick addendum to yesterday’s casting update for Warner Brothers’ remake of Akira: I’ve got my morning coffee, meaning I’m not nearly as bitter as I was yesterday. Oh and also, Superhero Hype has word that Gary Oldman has officially passed on the part of Colonel Shikishima, and Ken Watanabe (Inception) is their next choice for the character.

Watanabe is quickly becoming a recognizable face for his role in big movies like Christopher Nolan’s Inception and Batman Begins, but he’s had equal success in Japanese cinema. He’s a talented guy and would likely handle a complex role like ‘The Colonel’ pretty well, not to mention he’d be lending some much needed credibility to the rest of the young and fairly untested cast. With Oldman out, there’s not much star power left to carry the picture.

That said though, Garret Hedlund is still the only actor locked down as of yet. We’ll keep you updated on all the Akira news as it develops.

Hero Express – ‘Booster Gold’ Gets a Pilot, ‘Dark Knight’ Rumors Rise and ‘Star Trek 2’s Unlikely Villain

Welcome back to the Hero Express, your one-stop sometimes SPOILER filled shop through the news filled world of superhero’s in Film, TV, Video Games and whatever else floats your boat.

This is the Hero Express for November 23rd, 2011:

SyFy shooting Booster Gold Pilot – (MTV)

Here’s a short one to lead us back in to where Scoot left off in yesterday’s Express: Andrew Kreisberg , whose work you may know from Fringe, is slated to write a pilot for SyFy based on DC hero, Booster Gold. Executive Producer Greg Berlanti will be backing the project, which fits in nicely with his previous work on Green Lantern and No Ordinary Family.

It will be interesting to see if DC can find a place for its lesser-known heroes on television, as it seems they remain unable to find a lasting home on the silver screen.

‘Powers’ Pilot getting another Shot on FX – (MTV)

A while ago it was announced that the popular comic, Powers, was shooting a live-action pilot for FX, though it seemed initially like it wasn’t going to make it through. However, word is that FX has passed on a competing pilot and given Powers another chance, provided they can go back and do some more work on the special effects.

The comic’s writer, Brian Michael Bendis, tweeted happily about the news:

“In regard to ‘Powers’ TV: the pilot was crazy expensive and very lovely and shows incredible potential for a long series,” Bendis wrote. “The reshoots are planned for January and are all about tone and clarity. I am very proud of the pilot, as [is] [Michael Avon Oeming]. Stay tuned.”

Supposedly, according to Bendis, the process of going back to work on a pilot is not necessarily a bad sign, as FX is known to do this sort of thing. He mentioned that hit series Sons of Anarchy had to do the same.

A Slew of Set Photos from The Amazing Spider-Man – (SuperHero Hype/Newscom)

Two sets of photos have surfaced regarding The Amazing Spider-Man production. One features an extensive gallery of the cast on set for re-shoots, which you can see here. The other is much smaller, but much more revealing:

Most exciting to see, at least for me, is Rhys Ifans‘ ugly hand up there, which looks a lot like it means Connor’s experiment was a success (Giant lizard-monster transformation notwithstanding).

Empire Magazine’s TDKR Issue – (SuperHero Hype)

And here we are with the the Hero Express segment that likely overshadows the rest of these links; welcome to Dark Knight Station. Here are some photos (The best quality the internet has of them so far) of the Empire issue dedicated to the upcoming Batman movie: