‘An affront of the greatest order’

1 comment June 29th, 2009

On the one hand, TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN made more than $200 million for the weekend. On the other hand, it got some of the worst reviews in recent memory.

Here’s my favorite, from Robert Humanick over at The House Next Door. Not only does Humanick (who, keep in mind, liked the first TRANSFORMERS movie) blast the movie on a creative level, he blames it for the loss of several lives…

I mourn the volume of human life being wasted on this thing. If the film makes $100 million this weekend and tickets cost $10 a pop, that’s ten million viewers and a total of twenty-five million hours, not including previews, travel and the time spent earning the wasted money. If the average person lives to be 75, that’s 38 lives.

(And, because TRANFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN topped the $200 mil mark, that’s at least 76 lives lost.)

Read the rest of Humanick’s review here. The language, as you might guess from one so enraged, gets a bit salty — starting with the title of the piece. Consider yourself warned.

Get ready for a real tearjerker

Add comment June 29th, 2009

Via Cinematical, here’s a quote from Pixar animator Angus MacLane (via SciFi Wire) about the much anticipated third film in the TOY STORY series. MacLane created the funny BURN-E short that was included on the WALL-E DVD and worked on TOY STORY 2, where he created the Buzz Lightyear they met in Al’s Toy Barn. So, with all that Pixar experience at his disposal and a deep involvment with TS3 (in which Andy leaves for college), here’s what MacLane said…

“I feel like we’ve grown up making these movies, and each of the films represents where the filmmakers were at the time of making the films. Certainly we’re approaching this film 10 years later, so I think we’re sort of coming at it from the standpoint of [Andy] has grown up, and we’ve grown up with these toys, and we have a reverence for them, but we also have different things as a priority.”

If you don’t think this movie is going to break your heart, remember TOY STORY 2 (which Disney, in its endless wisdom, originally wanted to do as a straight-to-video quickie) contains The Saddest Song In Movie History…