Salon.com > Transformers

Is Megan Fox really Hollywood’s ideal mother?

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 20:00:00 +0000

For a woman who says she's not interested in her career right now, Megan Fox sure is doing everything a woman in Hollywood could do to raise her profile. The 26-year-old actress, in just the four months since the birth of her son, Noah, has managed to leverage motherhood into the pinnacle of celebrity success. And nowhere is that more evident than in her cover story in the new U.K. edition of Marie Claire. In her interview, she trots out all the most beloved of maternal party lines – including the classic I-have-the-very-best-job-in-the-world line. The sultry Ms. Fox, who was also recently the subject of the most slobbering fanboy cover story in the history of Esquire ("The symmetry of her face, up close, is genuinely shocking … It's closer to the sublime, a force of nature, the patterns of waves crisscrossing a lake, snow avalanching down the side of a mountain, an elaborately camouflaged butterfly") declares that acting "isn’t my job anymore" because "my job is to be with" her baby. Noah.

Michael Bay life lessons: Stress management

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 19:14:00 +0000

There may be some dispute over the quality of Michael Bay's directorial skills, but no one can deny that the man has a certain panache. With films about killer robots, killer comets and Peal Harbor, Bay's oeuvre may be full of violence, but they're also full of learning moments for the neurotically inclined.

Better than Tony Robbins or a self-help book, Michael Bay's movies are an advanced class on dealing with life when it hands you lemons. Lemons that are actually grenades and you have two minutes to deactivate before the whole country goes ka-BLAM!

Welcome to Michael Bay's stress management guide. Now take a deep breath, and go to your calm place...

Lesson 1: Keep your mantras simple

Everybody's had those days when life seems determined to weigh you down. While you might be inclined to give up and throw a pity party complete with a "Teen Moms" marathon and a bucket of ice cream, it's good to remember those wise words of Yoda: "Do or do not. There is no try." Though if you don't like taking advice from a short green guy, how about Sean Connery, who paraphrases the famous "Star Wars" line to a whiny Nicholas Cage in "The Rock."

Michael Bay plagiarizes Michael Bay for “Transformers 3″

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 18:06:00 +0000

Most famous directors have a signature style that lets you know you are watching one of their films: David Lynch will give you red curtains and flickering matches, Scorsese will have "Gimmie Shelter" slipped somewhere in between the violent acts of mob crime, and Steven Spielberg ... well, Steven Spielberg has a lot of recurring motifs. But at what point does a cinematic thumbprint turn into lazy self-plagiarism?

The answer to this theoretical film query has been answered by none other than Michael Bay, whose auteur work can be boiled down to "big things blowing up or hitting other big things." But even with that not-too-original concept, Bay has gotten sloppy: allegedly taking direct shots from his 2005 flop "The Island" and putting them in "Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon."

Last week, a viral-video pirate named Jermain Odreman spent a considerable amount of time watching Bay's movies in slow-motion in order to catch almost identical sequences from both films. The footage is unquestionably similar, down to the type of car that flips over, the angle of the smoke from the explosion, and the damage done by flying shrapnel.

“Transformers” blasts “Larry Crowne” at box office

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 12:50:00 +0000

Michael Bay's "Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon" -- which Salon's Andrew O'Hehir called "a great and terrible film, in identical proportions and in all possible meanings of those words" -- had a record-breaking weekend at the box office, taking in an estimated $116.4 million to achieve the most successful 4th of July opening in history. (The previous record-holder, "Spider-Man 2," took $115.8 million in 2004.) Bay's film also scored the biggest opening weekend of the year -- and Deadline.com points out that it's "doing even better overseas":

Internationally the movie is open in 110 countries (but not yet Japan or China) and is up +55% over the franchise's 2nd installment. Foreign should close in on $235M through Monday for Paramount Pictures International's biggest opening weekend ever.

“Passione”: John Turturro’s musical postcard from Naples

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 17:31:00 +0000

It wouldn't be right to let the holiday weekend go by without noticing John Turturro's eccentric summer delight "Passione," a valentine to Neapolitan music and culture that opened last week in New York and will soon be reaching other cities. Certainly in his extensive acting career Turturro has proven to be a consummate showman with an omnivorous appetite; you can see him at the multiplex right now, chewing the scenery as a defrocked CIA agent in "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" and voicing an arrogant Italian Formula One champion in "Cars 2." His intermittent directing career took a truly strange turn with the 2005 "Romance & Cigarettes," an inspired, insane and irresistible "jukebox musical" that paired James Gandolfini and Susan Sarandon on the streets of outer-borough New York.

Odd nostalgia: The strange films based on kids’ culture

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 16:30:00 +0000

I always find it weird when people complain about movies cashing in on our childhood nostalgia. Were Saturday morning cartoons so sacred that a crappy summer movie will forever taint our image of "Alvin and the Chipmunks"? Garfield and Marmaduke may have made terrible CGI stars, but it's not like I was so smitten with their comics anyway. (We get it, cat, you like lasagna.)

When "Transformers" arrived in theaters in 2007, there was an audible sigh of relief that the movie, while geared to Michael Bay's explosion-fetishist fans, still adhered to its "source material." Meaning what, exactly: That there were cars that turned into robots? That there was an actual narrative arc revolving around characters created by a Japanese toy company? Or something else?

Sometimes these nostalgia films become franchises and sometimes you end up with "The Last Airbender." Here is our tribute to the good, the bad and the just plain weird ("Boris and Natasha," anyone?") of kids' culture adapted for the big screen.

“Transformers: Dark of the Moon”: An American summer-movie masterwork

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 21:01:00 +0000

"Transformers: Dark of the Moon" is too much in every direction -- too much action, too much plot, too much noise, too much destruction -- which is exactly what makes it the Wagnerian fulfillment of the American summer-movie tradition. It's a great and terrible film, in identical proportions and in all possible meanings of those words. It's got battling giant robots and hidden secrets of the American and Soviet space programs and feeble domestic comedy and random scenery-chewing shtick from an A-list supporting cast and an extreme close-up of a hot chick's bikini-clad bottom as she climbs the stairs. In 3-D! It's so massively and excessively vulgar that it doesn't just flirt with self-parody, but chews it up and spits it out, and I'm not even sure that's unintentional. In food terms, "Dark of the Moon" is like going to TGI Friday's and ordering everything on the menu and then going to Krispy Kreme and doing it again. It's not worth doing, it'll definitely make you sick and a lot of it will taste bad, but as a performance-art act of juvenile Id-fulfillment, it's magnificent.