Universal Studios have just placed this new TV spot for the latest ride to hit Universal Studios Hollywood and it’s the Transformers ride.which is no doubt set to blow your socks off! It’ll hit the park in May and is guaranteed to come equipped with Bayhem!

The ride follows on from the movie franchise directed by Michael Bay and which stars Shia LaBeouf running around with his friends, the Autobots while trying to defeat the evil Decepticons! I’ve not been to Universal Studios Hollywood for 14 years but maybe it’s time i went back!

Visit PrepareForBattle.com for more info!

So remember yesterday when I wrote that long post about UltraViolet and how I’d never heard of it before? Well it turns out that a few hours later, I watched this video that Michael Bay made with Paramount to plug the special edition Blu-ray box set for Transformers: Dark of the Moon 3D and he gives UltraViolet a little plug!Now that Michael Bay has mentioned it, it surely must be worth a look!

Have a little watch of this video which shows what we can expect from the special edition 3d Blu-ray box set for Transformers: Dark of the Moon when it’s released later in the year in the US. What I’m not sure of is if the epic special edition will be available here in the UK. I’m currently writing this at 00:35 in the morning so I have no PR to ask but I shall investigate in the morning and update this post when I get more info. You can however pre-order the 3d Blu-ray here before it’s released on February 13th.

In the meantime, enjoy!

Source: MichaelBay.com

It seems like news about Michael Bay has been coming in fast and strong in the past few days. Earlier this week, we heard that Bay was reconsidering his position on declining to return to the Transformers franchise for a fourth film, with none other than Steven Spielberg fully backing his possible return.

Then yesterday, we got some great possible casting news in the form of Dwayne Johnson and Mark Wahlberg being eyed for Bay’s next and smaller-budgeted film, Pain and Gain.

Now comes the (in my eyes) fantastic news that Bay is in final talks to direct a fourth Transformers film for Paramount, via Vulture, and it sounds like the key is tied up in Pain and Gain.

Bay’s next film has been a passion project that he’s been developing since 2001, and he’d first been intending to direct it in between the second and third Transformers films. Since that didn’t happen, he’s now shifting from the $195m. budget of his last film, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, to a more moderate budget of $20m. for Pain and Gain, and it looks like Paramount are essentially going to greenlight and fund the smaller film for Bay if he’ll return to direct the fourth Transformers film for them.

As Spielberg recently commented, Bay really does seem to have a secret formula with his films, especially when you consider the ever-increasing box office performances of each of the successive Transformers films, and I’m already getting excited about seeing the robots return to the big screen under his direction.

The plan is to get Pain and Gain underway as early as the spring of next year, and whilst he’s shooting that, Bay will begin pre-production with art development and visual effects tests simultaneously, with an eye to start filming the fourth Transformers instalment by the winter of 2012.

Naturally plot details are being kept under wraps, but it sounds as though the next film is looking to hark back to some of the original characters and bring them to life on the big screen.

““Regular people might not care about bringing out a character like Sentinel Prime,” says one of our insiders, referring to the little-known character who played a major part in last summer’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon, “But believe me, fans of the series cared.””

No news yet on who’s going to be penning the script, but I’m hoping we’ll see the return of Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who co-wrote the first two films, alongside Ehren Kruger, who co-wrote the second film and took the third film on alone.

I thought Dark of the Moon was an absolutely brilliant film this year, with Bay really out-doing himself after what I think many fans thought was a bit of a drop-off in calibre in Revenge of the Fallen, so I’ve got high hopes for a fourth film, and every reason to expect Bay will fulfil every one of them.

One of the next big questions will of course be whether Shia LaBeouf, who had previously announced like Bay that he wouldn’t return for a fourth film, will reconsider his original position, and if not, then the studio will no doubt begin the search as soon as possible for who will fill his place in the lead.

It’s still early days yet, but it sounds like the deal is pretty close to closing for both Pain and Gain and the fourth Transformers film, and an official announcement is expected to come as early as next week. Keep your fingers crossed, because I think Bay has got two brilliant films coming for us in the next few years. More as we get it.

He may have his critics, like any other director, but you can’t argue that Michael Bay knows how to make a pretty damn successful movie, with his box office takings being overwhelmingly impressive.

His feature directorial debut, Bad Boys, took almost $150m., followed by The Rock and then Armageddon, which took north of $330m. and $550m. respectively. The man knows how to make a great film that people want to see.

His latest film, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the third in the recent Transformers franchise, earned more than a billion dollars internationally. More than a billion. At the time, he’d announced that it would be his final time directing a Transformers movie, three films into the franchise, but it looks like he may be re-thinking his decision.

Collider report, with tip-offs from EntertainmentWeekly, /Film, and Channel News Asia, that in an interview with EW, Steven Spielberg, who’s worked as executive producer on all the Transformers films, was asked whether he thought Bay would return to direct a fourth instalment, and this was his reply:

“I hope so, because I think he made the best of the three with this last one. I certainly can’t imagine anybody other than Michael being equipped to make another Transformers. He’s invented a genre and he’s got the secret formula.”

Though it’s only a ‘hope’, in his words, I definitely think he has a point. Bay does seem to have the secret formula, and I really can’t imagine anyone else taking the helm in his place. The Transformers director himself recently spoke to Channel News Asia about the possibility and said,

“How did I know someone’s going to ask me this question today? We’re talking about it, but there’s nothing right now. I’m going to do a tiny movie first, then we’ll talk about it, if I potentially do it.”

So fans of the franchise and fans of Bay, keep your fingers crossed. I’m a big fan of Bay’s films, and would love to see him take on another Transformers film. I think a lot of people would agree that Dark of the Moon was a big improvement on Revenge of the Fallen, and with a fourth movie all but inevitable, I think it only seems right that Bay would be the one to take it on.

That small film he wants to do first looks to be a project called Pain and Gain, a black comedy that he’d initially wanted to do between the second and third Transformers films. Since that is low-budget, and has been in the pipeline for some time, let’s hope that it won’t take too long to get production on it underway and completed, because it should be a great project too.

And once it’s finished, then we might well get to see him return for a fourth Transformers film. The question would then, of course, be whether or not Shia LaBeouf would return as the lead. LaBeouf has said that Dark of the Moon would be his final Transformers film too, but if Bay were to return, I wouldn’t rule LaBeouf out as a possibility at all. More as we get it.

To celebrate the release of Transformers: Dark Of The Moon coming to DVD and Blu-Ray on 28^th November, HeyUGuys has has hooked up with Paramount Home Entertainment to offer four readers the chance of winning Transformers: Dark Of The Moon on Blu-ray along with a Transformers graphic novel.

From director Michael Bay and executive producer Steven Spielberg, in association with Hasbro, Transformers: Dark of the Moon explodes with high-octane action when a mysterious event from Earth’s past erupts into the present day threatening to bring a war to Earth so big that the TRANSFORMERS alone will not be able to save us. Introducing British newcomer Rosie Huntington-Whiteley alongside stars Shia LaBeouf (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), Josh Duhamel (Life As We Know It), Tyrese Gibson (Four Brothers) and John Turturro (The Good Shepherd) have returned along with a host of new stars including Patrick Dempsey (“Grey’s Anatomy”), Frances McDormand (Fargo) and John Malkovich (Beowulf).  The film also features the voices of Leonard Nimoy (“Star Trek”) and Hugo Weaving (Captain America: The First Avenger).

Transformers: Dark Of The Moon is the 3^rd instalment of the phenomenally successful Transformers franchise from Director Michael Bay and Executive Producer Steven Spielberg, that sees hero Sam Witwicky and the Autobots once again take on the might of the Decepticons.  Starring Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel and Rosie Huntington-Whitely, Transformers: Dark Of The Moon is available to pre-order here.

To be in with a chance of winning the movie, simply answer the following question using the form below:

Who directed the movie, Transformers: Dark Of The Moon?

COMPETITION NOW CLOSED

The small print:

• Open to UK residents only
• Only one entry per household will be counted
• The competition will close 28th November at 23.59 GMT
• The winner will be picked at random from entries received
• No cash alternative is available

The usual T&Cs can be found here. Good Luck!

If you thought we’d seen the last of Transformers: Dark of the Moon when it came out at the end of June this year, you were very much mistaken.

Director Michael Bay, who’s helmed all three of the Transformers films, has now put up on his site dozens and dozens of immensely awesome photos from behind the scenes, taken by the film’s photographer, Robert Zuckerman.

As we wrote at the start of August, the film has joined that elusive club in the movie industry grossing more than $1bn. dollars, becoming one of the three films to do it this year, alongside Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.

Bay has said that the film completes his trilogy for the franchise, and will thus be his final Transformers film, which I think is a solid decision on his part. I thought Dark of the Moon was a great film, and did a lot to improve on Revenge of the Fallen, and Bay has ended on a high note with these films here.

With the film now finished at UK box offices, I thought we’d be waiting for the DVD/Blu-Ray release (and you can be sure this is a film to see on Blu-Ray if you can) to get another look at it, but Bay and photographer Zuckerman have been nice enough to give us a reminder of how beautiful the film’s visuals are. Bay’s put up literally more than a hundred and fifty photos, so if you’d like to see them all (which I highly recommend), then you can do so here. I’ve chosen a few of my favourites to share with you below. As usual, click to enlarge.

When you look at the second and third Transformers movies, you have to wonder why they keep making them but then this news comes out which explains everything! Paramount have just released a press release stating that Transformers: Dark of the Moon has now surpassed $1bn worldwide. Bear in mind this is simply from cinema takings and not including any DVDs, Blu-rays or digital downloads. Madness!

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen made $836,297,228 with the original movie (which was by far the best), making $709,709,780. I guess inflation and 3d helped the most recent movie. Transformers: Dark of the Moon joins the following (courtesy of Wikipedia) which is now slightly out of date with this new news.

Scroll down for the full press release:

TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON” CROSSES $1 BILLION WORLDWIDE

HOLLYWOOD, CA (August 3, 2011) – Worldwide box office receipts for TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON, have hit $1 billion, Paramount Pictures announced today. To date, the third installment of the hit Transformers franchise, and the first shot in 3-D, has grossed $338 million in U.S. (through Monday) and $663 million internationally (through Tuesday).

“TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON is the first billion dollar grossing movie in the history of Paramount Pictures, marking a substantial milestone in the 99 year life of this legendary studio,” said Brad Grey, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of Paramount Pictures. “We are grateful for the extraordinary work of Michael Bay and his film-making team, executive producer Steven Spielberg, and everyone at Paramount around the globe who played a part in helping make this latest TRANSFORMERS one of the 10 highest grossing films worldwide of all time”.

Earlier this summer, Paramount was the first studio to reach $1 billion in domestic grosses, aided by the $180.7 million opening of TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON over the July 4th holiday. This is the fifth year in a row that Paramount has reached the milestone before any other studio. Paramount Pictures International crossed the $2 billion mark on July 30th, making it the first for any studio this year to reach the benchmark. The studio has had six consecutive movies earning over $100 million at the domestic box office in 2011.

TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON is directed by Michael Bay, written by Ehren Kruger and produced by Don Murphy & Tom DeSanto, Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Ian Bryce. The executive producers are Steven Spielberg, Michael Bay, Brian Goldner and Mark Vahradian. When a mysterious event from Earth’s past erupts into the present day it threatens to bring a war to Earth so big that the Transformers alone will not be able to save us. The movie stars Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel, John Turturro, Tyrese Gibson, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Patrick Dempsey, Kevin Dunn, Julie White with John Malkovich and Frances McDormand.

JJ Abrams, Steven Spielberg and Summer are the potent combination behind Super 8, the 70s set suburban monster movie with its roots deep in blockbuster nostalgia.

Adam’s review is up on the site here, and I agreed with a lot of what he said and found myself in a minority of those who felt the film’s finale failed to live up to the early promise.

That it will be a big summer hit is not in doubt and in a summer season of superheroes, prequels and sequels it’s nice to have an original tale to tell.

While Super 8 doesn’t reach the heights of E.T. and Close Encounters (nor Abrams’ own Star Trek) it has its moments and we can enjoy two new clips from the film below.

The first is from the lead up to the big trailer moment – the train crash. This is where the film is at its strongest and the clip shows the engaging characters making their film before it all kicks off in spectacular style.

The second clip is of people talking and isn’t really all that much fun. But hey, here you go – remember kids, the film is out in the UK on the 5th of August.

Let’s get Sourced with Empire, shall we?

Before the credits begin in director J.J Abrams’ follow-up to his much-praised 2009 Star Trek reboot, the welcoming reveal of the iconic Amblin logo, followed by Abram’s own Bad Robot  is a match made in geek heaven and more or less spells out the potentially mouth-watering symbiosis of what’s to be expected. Unfortunately, for all the talent involved (Spielberg himself is credited as one of the producers), this isn’t quite the film of the summer, which the hype, State-side, would have you believe.

The films begins first with a tragedy (which is simply and devastatingly touched upon) which sets into motion the struggles between the main child protagonist and his father (Friday Night Light’s Kyle Chandler), a widowed police deputy who is insistent that his son attend summer baseball camp and not idle his days away with a group of friends making little Super 8 films. Joe (a nicely unstated turn by newcomer Joel Courtney) is far from happy at this proposal as he and his friends are in the midst of shooting a zombie epic, of which he is prepping to shoot at an old, disused railway platform that very night. As the young, budding filmmakers assemble (what follows is a beautifully-acted scene as the kids rehearse for a take) they soon find themselves caught in the middle of a epic train crash – an incredibly gripping sequence as huge, flaming cargo carriages swirl around the kids and plummet back down to earth as they make a frantic scramble to safety.

The resulting pile-up appears to unleash some strange and powerful unseen force from within a holding tank, and some equally otherworldly artefacts (which one of the group mistakes for some kind of enhanced Rubik’s Cube). As the understandably shaken-up kids (nice to see performers reacting appropriately to such a dramatic incident) stumble upon the cause of the accident, the arrival of the military forces them to flee the scene. Soon their small town is under lockdown as a mysterious and malevolent force is doing away with its inhabitants, causing family pets to flee from homes and household appliances to disappear.

As you may have read, Abrams has previously stated that this film was a meshing together of two scripts – one, a rites-of-passage period tale of young teenagers shooting Super 8 movies, and the other which focused on the military transporting an alien from Area 51. Unfortunately, the two tales reconfigured as one becomes very noticeable towards the midway mark, where the alien thread of the story begins to feel increasingly shoe-horned in with the other coming-of-age hook, leading to character contrivances and leaps in logic which hurt the narrative. The kids certainly seem to piece together the creatures plans and mindset given only the sparsest of information, (which itself is delivered via some clucky exposition), and the slow build up which has come before (with some expertly-handled moments of suspense) gives way to a more bombastic tone and a much more simplistic dénouement, losing most of the character intimacy and mystery that it’s spent so long on establishing, and which has worked so well up until an hour or so in.

The kids stuff is certainly strongest part of the film, and the young cast are all pretty fantastic. Courteney has just that right mix of wide-eyed innocence, but he also has an inner strength and resolve which is very appealing too. The gang’s sole female member (and potential heart-breaker), Elle Fanning, does some solid work here as well, and Riley Griffiths as Charles, the pushy director who is constantly looking at ways to enhance his film (he excitedly yells “Production value!” as he rushes to catch the oncoming train on celluloid) is very funny. It’s all the more frustrating when this initially fine character work begins to ebb away as the film progresses.

J. J. Abrams insistence in adhering so close to that halcyon Spielberg era does produce some fun results (the frantic, multiple kids environment in Charles’ household is a delightful nod to the suburban hijacks in the likes of Poltergeist and ‘Close Encounters’) but in being so reverential to that style, Abram’s his own directorial imprint (apart from the cosmetic redeployment of tons of lens flares) is scarcely noticeable. Unlike his mentor, he really struggles too in establishing a human connection and empathy with the alien, and the ending (which can’t help but recall ET’s) doesn’t convey anywhere close to the emotion payoff of to that film. Admittedly, it’s a tough job to try and achieve something which sits within that high benchmark of pop cinema, but if you’re referencing that age and style of filmmaking, comparisons (however unfounded) will undoubtedly be made. Composer and Abram regular Michael Giacchino’s work suffers too as he attempts to emulate the great John Williams (very evident in the more dramatic notes) but unlike his work on Star Trek, where he took an extremely well-worn theme and made it his own, there’s little here which bears much of his own musical stamp.

Even more worrying, when the alien is revealed in all its full glory towards the end (Abrams thankfully works with that long-established trope of leaving it a mystery until then) it looks like a discarded design for one of the robots in Transformers, which someone in the art department at Paramount has dug out and reworked with a flesh and blood makeover. In many ways, the film seems to be fighting a losing battle between that more intimate character and fantasy mix which was synonymous with Spielberg’s earlier work, and the current, far-from-subtle era of cinema he is producing, which is very much characterised by those wearisome robots in disguise.

Some of this criticism may sound a little nit-picky and Super 8 is far from a bad movie and is often very enjoyable, but having raised the bar so high in the Star Trek universe those two summers back, and by demonstrating an ability to blend a breathlessly exciting atmosphere with a rewarding level of emotional investment into characters and their predicaments, sadly, Abrams doesn’t come close to matching it here.

It’s a summer movie which is worth seeing (although claims of it being an original endeavour seem a tad moot, given the homage-filled content) but don’t go in there expecting an immensely satisfying throwback to the 80’s school of awe and wonder. You may have to wait for the further adventures of Kirk and Co. for that.

***~~ (3/5)

Tech Sergeant Epps and Captain Lennox quickly worked out in 2007′s Transformers that their conventional ammunition wasn’t going to cut it when it came to bringing down a Decepticon. Instead, they needed to use Rapier rounds (or something) because they burn at a higher temperature (or something). What neither of them knew then, what none of us could have known then, is that the franchise as a whole would evolve to become entirely bullet-proof within four short years.

For the most part, Transformers (2007) was well-received. Of course it was not everyone’s cup of tea and it was loud and silly, but the special effects were outstanding and the action sequences breath-taking, with a fairly arch and knowing script touching the right bases on its way from A to B. 2009′s sequel, Revenge of the Fallen, very much eschewed the “less is more” ethos in favour of “a lot more is a lot more”. We had lots more Decepticons, we didn’t really know who they were or what they were doing, Megan Fox gratuitously spread herself over a motorbike in order to keep teenage boys (and middle-aged fathers) happy, pyramids got trashed, outrageous racial stereotypes were perpetuated, we were treated to a giant swinging set of Decepticon testicles and Michael Bay just kept turning up the volume. As a film it had moments of fun and entertainment, but it fell way short of the first in terms of quality, coherence and cohesion and yet, here’s the thing; it made $836m to the $708m of the first instalment.

Clearly these films were becoming increasingly critic-proof, as Revenge of the Fallen was roundly lambasted by film journalists. Two stars seemed to be the order of the day (for whatever that is worth) and Mark Kermode in particular savaged the film as misogynistic, crass and racist. A year down the line, Bay himself confessed that ROTF had fallen short of expectations in terms of quality and that the next film, which by then was underway would correct its shortcomings as a way of making things up to the audience, who he acknowledged deserved better. This was quite an admission and heightened expectations that Dark of the Moon (as it came to be known) would be more akin to the 2007 in terms of quality. But consider those box office numbers again for a moment. No doubt Michael Bay has no desire to be known as some sort of hack who gets good box office but remains dismissed by the critics fraternity. He plays to his strengths (great set-pieces, high-quality action direction, lots of explosions), but he won’t be wholly indifferent to his critical reputation. Having said that, Paramount would have taken a long, hard look at those figures and, one would assume, leaned towards Bay’s ear to whisper, “if it ain’t broke…”. What they clearly had on their hands here was a combination of product and director with alchemic qualities, able to produce pure gold out of base components. It didn’t make any difference whether the critics liked it or not, audiences were pouring in, fortunes were made and all of a sudden the franchise became boxed in.

So here we are in 2011 and Dark of the Moon is now with us. It is every bit the bullet-proof juggernaut that its’ predecessor was. In excess of $400m in its first week, worldwide. This despite some unbelievably vitriolic reviews. Film Freak Central says:-

Transformers: Asshole holds the distinction of being the first movie this year I’m actually ashamed of. In it, I recognize every failing of we the people, paraded before us as though they were virtues.

Roger Ebert says:-

a visually ugly film with an incoherent plot, wooden characters and inane dialog. It provided me with one of the more unpleasant experiences I’ve had at the movies.

Mark Kermode had nothing nice to say at all, dismissing it as soft-core porn, crass, leering and obscene. Reviews were, in the interests of fairness and balance, more positive elsewhere, but certainly no-one hailed it as a masterpiece. Empire Magazine captured the inevitable outcome best with their summary:-

An improvement on Transformers 2, but then what isn’t? To paraphrase the Bard, it’s a tale, full of sound and fury and extremely stupid dialogue and nonsensical plotting and preposterous stunts and robots punching each other’s heads off, signifying nothing. Needless to say, it’s going to be huge.

Exactly. It didn’t matter what anyone thought of the film, it didn’t matter whether it was better or worse than the previous films, it didn’t matter whether Bay learned his lessons and gave us the Transformers film we deserved. It was bigger, louder, longer, more exciting, better-rendered and most importantly, in 3D. Yes, you get to wear uncomfortable shades for 160 minutes as well. To be honest, I quite enjoyed a lot of it, though Bay insistence on salivating over Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s body every five minutes was dreary and unpleasant. But, IT DOESN’T MATTER. This franchise has become indestructible, death proof. The critics have turned on the film and it has made no difference at all.

Bear in mind that this isn’t the first critically-mauled, effects-heavy film to reach the cinema recently. Skyline performed wretchedly and Green Lantern has fared far worse than hoped by the studio. Neither of these could escape from the impact of negative reviews and ambivalent audience reactions. But where they stumbled and fell, Dark of the Moon has shrugged and carried on pounding. The difference must be that regardless of what it says about our taste in films, regardless of whether we should like it or not, Bay is giving the audience what they want and we are lapping it up. No-one is going to be able to convince Bay or Paramount that a wrong turn has been taken and that the franchise needs to be scaled back, rebooted and the quality improved (as seems to be happening now with Spider-Man). Successive franchise entries have been louder, longer and less refined and the money just keeps pouring in ever more abundantly.

I’m not sure what if anything can stop this juggernaut. Unless the studio decides to grasp some higher ideal of not sacrificing quality and artistic integrity on the altar of commercial success, we will surely just get more of the same. For these sorts of projects, money talks. It took the unmitigated failure of Batman & Robin to wrestle the franchise away from Schumacher and entrust it to Nolan, which has resulted in The Dark Knight, Oscar success and greater box office returns than any other entry in the franchise. Unless and until we stop watching these films, they won’t change. Why would they? Why should they? We have only ourselves to blame.

Megan Fox and John C. Reilly will both be taking cameo roles in Sacha Baron Cohen’s next venture, The Dictator, which is to star Baron Cohen, Anna Faris, and Sir Ben Kingsley, THR report.

The film is being directed by Larry Charles, who’s been working with Baron Cohen for the past few years, and also helmed 2006’s Borat and 2009’s Brüno with Baron Cohen of course playing the titular roles in both.

Fox and Reilly’s roles are being kept under wraps for the time being, but no doubt they’ll both be brilliant additions to what sounds like another hilarious and controversial Baron Cohen film. Following the success of his past two films, the actor decided to retire the characters because of their increased recognisability, and he’s now moved onto this project, which will tell,

“the heroic story of a dictator who risked his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed.”

You can already feel the controversy. Add to that the fact that it’s a loose adaptation of the novel, Zabibah and the King, widely believed to have been written by Saddam Hussein, and it’s pretty much a sure thing that the film is going to be simultaneously criticised and hailed among critics and fans.

Reilly needs no introduction as an actor who can play both very serious and very funny roles, starring as Officer Jim Kurring in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia back in 1999, and starring opposite Will Ferrell in Step Brothers three years ago. He’ll also be playing the role of the father, Franklin, in the upcoming adaptation of bestselling novel, We Need To Talk About Kevin, due out on 21st October this year, and which is already being tipped as a contender for next year’s Academy Awards.

After leaving the role of Mikaela in the Transformers franchise, the projects Fox has most recently joined are both comedies, Friends With Kids and Judd Apatow’s next feature, This Is Forty. Both films are due out next year, along with The Dictator, so 2012 is set to be a year we see something a little different from Fox, being cast in funnier roles.

The Dictator has been scripted by Baron Cohen and former Seinfeld writers Alec Berg, David Mandel, and Jeff Schaffer, all of whom have been writing for the brilliant Curb Your Enthusiasm since then, and Schaffer was also part of the writing team for Brüno two years ago. With such excellent writers, a brilliant director, and an ingenious lead actor with excellent supports, and now great cameo roles confirmed, its release next year on 11^th May is shaping up to be something to look forward to.

USA Today have got a new image of Shockwave, the main villain of the upcoming Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

The first images of Shockwave, who wasn’t in either of the first two films, surfaced back in April, and showed that he’s been given a pretty hefty makeover, to become what will no doubt be one of the strongest Decepticons, and most difficult to bring down, that we’ve seen.

USA Today also spoke to producer, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who was a producer on both the first two, and he said of Shockwave,

“He’s always been a mean, mean guy, but he’s even more menacing and more dangerous. He’s bigger, badder, with a greater arsenal.

“It’s crazy spectacular. Shockwave is just a ball of destruction, pulling whole skyscrapers down. He’s a messy guy to have in our world.

“It’s a huge escalation in the amount of damage that one Decepticon can wreak. He’s capable of wholesale destruction…that’ really bad for humans.

“Decepticons have a united plan, but as usual they don’t get along. The inter-distrust between the villains is even stronger than before.”

He’s definitely looked pretty menacing in the pictures we’ve seen of him so far, so expect plenty of mayhem and destruction come July. Director Michael Bay has said that this will be the last instalment of the Transformers films he’s been directing, so I think it’s safe to say that this is going to be epic by any standards.

Also over the weekend, Linkin Park debuted their music video for Iridescent and Paramore debuted their new song, Monster, both of which are on the new soundtrack, which is to be released digitally on 14^th June, and physically here on 27^th June.

The films’ soundtracks have always had their foundations in rock music, and Dark of the Moon is no different. Unlike Revenge of the Fallen, which saw Linkin Park release New Divide specifically for the movie, Iridescent is instead taken off their last album, A Thousand Suns, just like What I’ve Done was taken off Minutes To Midnight for the first film. The music video features some great new footage of the upcoming film, along with some of the space scenes we’ve seen in the trailers, and like most of their music videos, was directed by their turntablist, Joe Hahn.

This will the first time Paramore are featured on a Transformers soundtrack. They appeared on the first Twilight film’s soundtrack with their song, Decode, back in 2008, which instantly exploded among fans, and their new single, the first song they’ve released since the departure of two of their band members, looks to be doing the same, with over a million views on YouTube in a matter of days.

Also featured on the soundtrack will be a new Taking Back Sunday single, Faith (When I Let You  Down), which you can hear here. If you’re a fan like me, you’ll be glad you listened. Without further ado, here are the image and the songs.

You will have noticed the brief snippets in the assorted trailers for Transformers: Dark of the Moon, showing those guys in funky gliding suits hurling themselves out of perfectly serviceable aeroplanes in order to glide slowly towards certain death at the hands of marauding Decepticons.

If you’re wondering how they do that stuff, wonder no longer, for here is a short featurette with a host of technical crew on hand to explain what they do and how they do it. We get lots of helmet-cam action, input from Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson and for those of you who can’t be bothered with all of the flapping around, some nice explosions at the two-minute mark.

For what it’s worth, Michael Bay seems to be true to his word. He admitted the shortcomings of Revenge of the Fallen and seems willing and able to strike out on some relatively new ideas here, rather than just giving us more of the same. Some would say if it ain’t broke and all that, but that merely gives merit to box office takings. In terms of quality, we need something fresh, something new. I know that a few sky-diving soldiers does not exactly make this Batman Begins to Schumacher’s bat-nipples, but let’s give Bay the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he’ll pull something out of the bag for us.

Source: AOL.

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Some readers may be familiar with a show on the UK’s BBC Radio 5Live station on a Saturday morning, by the name of Fighting Talk. It is a sports quiz and involves a final tie-break round called “Defend the Indefensible”. Such is my cue for what I hope will become a regular-ish series of attempts to sing the (relative) praises of the much maligned of the film world, be it particular actors, directors, films or trends. Hoping not to have bitten off more than I can chew, I will start with the King of Mayhem himself, Michael Bay.

It is well known that Bay started off his career in music videos, before progressing to a feature director of a relatively long line of Simpson/Bruckheimer (eventually just Bruckheimer) high-concept productions. By the time Transformers: Dark of the Moon hits our screens this summer (in *yawn* 3D), Bay will have racked up 9 feature credits as director. The question is, at least for the purposes of this article, are any of them any good? The films we are talking about here are Bad Boys (x 2), Transformers (x 3), The Rock, Armageddon, The Island and Pearl Harbor. Is there anything commendable among that selection, perhaps anything commendable about Bay’s style and approach in general? Is he a wrongly-maligned man, or a sun-set obsessed hack?

Undoubtedly there is a certain wilful superficiality to many of Bay’s films. As the above clip compilation shows, there is a disproportionate amount of orange-tinged sunset in his films that has become a running joke rather than a commendable trademark. Ridiculous levels of explosions, car crashes and demolition of buildings/landmarks/cities seem to have become his stock-in-trade and as Roland Emmerich has found lately, there is nowhere you can really go once you have started in that direction, other than louder, bigger, more. But am I arguing myself into a corner here? Am I building too strong a case against my own premise? Well, no. If you will indulge me for a few minutes, I will try to show that Bay is actually highly adept at playing to his strengths and that his detractors not withstanding, he gives many what they want and better than almost anyone out there.

Consider that sequence of films listed above. Clearly they are a bombastic bunch, possessing none of the subtlety of, say, The Bourne Ultimatum, Inception or X-Men 2 (to list a few recent examples of effects or stunt/action heavy, but critically lauded films). But is that not the point? Bay has never made any pretensions at subtlety, it simply is not what he is aiming for, nor is it what his target audience want or expect. We may wish that his target audience were a little more discerning, but they are what they are and he gives them what they want. Explosions. Absurd action. High concepts. Big set pieces. Giant alient robots that turn into giant trucks, tanks, helicopters and stereos. It is surely not his fault that millions of cinema goers like that sort of thing and actively seek it out. Indeed it is to his credit that he gives people what they want with so much style, polish and bombast.

Any old hack can direct an action scene, but that doesn’t necessarily result in a coherent end product. Consider McG’s work on the Charlie’s Angels films, or Stephen Sommers stumbles with The Mummy Returns and GI Joe. Plenty of money spent, plenty of bang for your buck, but much more limited commercial success. And let’s consider that commercial success. It is so easy to get snooty about box office success in and of itself, as if a film ought to be massively uncommercial in order to preserve its non-mainstream, trendy credentials. But who really wants to make a film that makes no money? Ideally of course we want a marrying of commercial success and artistic merit (on which point we return to the above examples of Bourne, Nolan and Singer’s superior X-Men sequel), but clearly we’re not going to get that every time. What we must not do however, is savage Bay for no other reason than because his films are successful at the box office without subscribing to our personal definition of artistic quality. Although his budgets have been creeping up of late to nigh-on unserviceable levels (in terms of the ability of the film to break even without making a billion dollars at the box office), he has manged to bring in highly profitable films (with perhaps the exception of Bad Boys 2 and The Island) that have done exactly what they say on the tin.

I also firmly believe that Bay deserves significant credit for his candor and self-awareness. He has openly admitted that he messed up with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, delivering a film that suffered from some extremely poor elements (giant swinging wrecking ball testicles on a Constructicon anyone?) even though it made $100m+ more than the first film at the worldwide box office. Bay could have hidden behind the figures but instead acknowledged the film’s shortcomings, recognised the debt he owes to the film-going public and promised to deliver something better next time around. We will get to see how he fares in a few short weeks. In 3D.

This advert for fibre-optic broadband also showcases Bay’s significant sense of self-effacement. He recognises how he is perceived and is willing to send himself up (although no doubt his fee from Verizon has helped salve his wounded ego). Not everyone is prepared to do that. So many directors and actors take themselves so seriously. Why so serious? Where’s the sense of fun? Of course I cannot point to a single one of his films and say that it was my favourite film of the year in question. Of course he is not laden with “proper” awards for his many years of hard work. But I have watched Armageddon more times than I have seen The Godfather and if I fancy sitting down to watch a film of an evening, I can guarantee my thoughts will turn to Bay before they turn to the French New Wave, or Italian neo-realism, or Eisenstein.

You see, it’s not always about the inherent artistic quality of a film. Sometimes it is a matter of pure, visceral enjoyment. Of switching off and savouring the destruction of an entire city, for no other reason than because the SFX exist to be able to do it. There is enough space in the world of films for all of it and Bay should be applauded for working his niche tirelessly and delivering something satisfying that is often exactly what I am looking for. So come on, stick The Rock in your DVD player, sit back and let’s put a smile on that face.

*****

So what do you think? Have I made my case? Is Bay pardoned? Does he remain guilty as charged for crimes against cinema? Comment below. Please also let me know if there is anyone else, or any particular films that you think need defending. Spiderman 3? X-Men: Origins: Wolverine? Just don’t ask me to defend Blade:Trinity. Everyone has their limits.

Gosh, it’s certainly been a while. Those of you with long memories, or matchless devotion to Transformers, 1980′s style will know that Leonard Nimoy voiced Galvatron in 1986′s Transformers: The Movie. Galvatron was a kind of reboot of Megatron, after Unicron got his hands on him. Unicron was a planet-sized Transformer, voiced by Orson Welles, who was seeking the Matrix of Leadership.

It’s a bit complicated. Anyway….

Nimoy is set to return to Transformers voice duties, this time as Sentinel Prime, the brother of Optimus Prime and his predecessor as leader of the Autobots. Sentinel Prime was introduced to us on the front page of Empire Magazine a couple of months back and by the sound of things, he is the Transformer found/seen on the moon during this teaser and will feature in the film’s climactic showdown in Chicago.

Needless to say, Nimoy’s gravelly tones are perfectly suited to TF voice-duties and will bring a further touch of class to an already excellent voice cast (Peter Cullen, Hugo Weaving, Frank Welker). I’m tempted to be excited about TF3 after the debacle that was Revenge of the Fallen, but once bitten twice shy, so we’ll wait and see. What do you think?

Source: ComicBookMovie.com.

Paramount Pictures have released the official Super Bowl TV spot for upcoming sci-fi action film Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

Directed by Michael Bay, Transformers: Dark of the Moon is the third and final installment in the hugely successful Transformers film franchise, and stars Shia LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro, Patrick Dempsey, Lester Speight, Ramon Rodriguez, Frances McDormand and John Malkovich.

The Autobots learn of a Cybertronian spacecraft on the Moon and must race against the Decepticons to find it and learn its secrets, which could turn the tide in the Transformers’ final battle.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon will be released in the UK on July 1.

Watch the Super Bowl TV spot below and watch all TV spots and trailer from the evening here.

Watch the Super Bowl TV spot below:

I guess this qualifies as a bit of Friday Fun. Slash Film have been so kind as to post an infographic (Research and Design by: CarInsurance.org), showing all of the Autobots from the cartoons that aired between 1984 and 1986. For me, that was the Transformers heyday. They were cool, I loved them, the cartoons were on every morning during the school holidays and frankly no amount of Michael Bay, sunset-tinged, explode everything-ness comes close.

For those of you who lived through this golden era of Transformers, enjoy. If you were not so fortunate, see below what you’ve been missing. Either way, let us know below which ones you love, which toys you owned and which you think the live-action films have improved on.

It’s rather massive so click it to make it full size.

The LA Times have got their hands on some more on-set shots from this year’s Transformers sequel: Dark of the Moon. In their article, they look in detail at the genesis of Michael Bay’s involvement in the franchise and how the films developed, including some candid admissions from Bay regarding the artistic shortcomings of the second film, Revenge of the Fallen. Bay said, for example:-

“Look, we got burned on the last movie. The big thing was the writers strike, it hurt the film and it made it hard on everybody. We had three weeks to get our story and, really, we were going into the movie without a script. It’s tough to do that. It was too big of a movie. There were too many endings or too many things that felt like endings. There was so much animation [in the visual effects post-production work], too, and we ran out of time.  We used the schedule of the first movie for the second movie but on the second one way more labor was needed for the animation. And then it felt like we were writing the script in the edit room, trying to put together a story.”

Bay promises that Dark of the Moon will be lean and mean, less mystical than Sam Witwicky’s arc from the second film, more like “a good old-fashioned mystery..a tougher movie”. Much of the action will take place in Chicago and Bay is said to be very pleased with the style and effect of the urban warfare scenes, having gone for a Black Hawk Down aesthetic with them (much like this spring’s upcoming Battle: Los Angeles) although there is mention of a sequence involving glide-suited commandos swooping between skyscrapers, which doesn’t immediately sound like scaled down, gritty urban warfare. Having said that, credit is due to Bay for his candour in confessing his disappointment at some of his work on the second film. He could easily have said that since it made a packet of money, who cares? But he seems to have more artistic integrity than that.

Bay also shares a lot of his experiences in working with 3D cameras for the first time and the challenges they present when working with a lot of physical effects. It seems that the past few months have been a rich and varied learning experience for Bay, but the resulting footage seems to be going down well.

We will get to enjoy the fruit of Bay’s labours (and those of the rest of the cast and crew) on 1st July 2011. In the meantime, here are those on set shots for your viewing pleasure. Feel free to catch the rest of the LA Times article here.

Tom Hardy continues his ascension up the Hollywood ladder with news coming in that he’ll be teaming up with another young star (Transformers man Shia LaBeouf) for John Hillcoat’s next feature.

According to the LA Times, the two are set to star in the director’s follow up to The Road – a period thriller called The Wettest County in the World. Judging by the title, one would presume that the film’s location is over here in the UK, but it’s an adaptation from a novel by Matt Bondurant, set around the prohibition era in the US, and focusing on a family of bootleggers and the various crimes they commit and their run-ins with the law.

Written by Nick Cave (who preformed scoring and scriptwriting duties on Hillcoat’s The Proposition), the film is aiming for a start date next spring, which presumably, is the next time there’s a space in Hardy’s incredibly busy schedule.

It kind of feels as though Transformers: The Dark of the Moon has been filming forever and I am tempted to suggest that in order to meet next summer’s release date they might want to wrap shooting and crack on with rendering the likely absurd levels of CGI that will be needed for the assorted robot action that will be on show.

Anyhow, those are matters for Paramount, Dreamworks and Michael Bay to concern themselves with. As shooting continues apace, we now have an on-set snap, courtesy of Inner City Press, set in the General Assembly Hall of the UN building in New York.

The accompanying story from Inner City Press makes quite interesting reading, expressing a level of concern over the lack of announcements and even awareness within the UN’s Public Information Department as to the use to which the UN building is being put.

Whether the finished scene will have a load of added Autobot and Decepticon goodness, or will be a diplomatic plea of “can’t we all just get along?”, we will see next summer.