3/18/2008 - evolution of dance tribute

What's the most popular YouTube video so far? That would be the "evolution of dance" video posted two years ago. Why haven't I featured that video on this blog? It just doesn't meet my oh so stringent standards of quality. Just kidding... it just doesn't float my boat. However, if you replace Judson Laipply with none other than the leader of the Autobots... well, now you have a video I can appreciate!

2/21/2008 - Shia LaBeouf in "No No No NOo" video

Shia LaBeouf is probably the biggest rising star in the land of L.A. today. He starred in the ultra-popular Transformers movie last summer and he'll be some kind of sidekick to Indiana Jones himself this summer. It's easy to see why he's so popular. He looks like a regular teenager and acts like a regular teenager. And when I say "regular", I don't mean like those you'd see on the football field... I mean like those you'd see in the band. Yeah, it would be unrealistic to see Shia score a girl like Megan Fox, but this was a movie about 50-foot robots from outer space, after all.

If Clint Eastwood is known for the line, "Go ahead, make my day", then Shia will ultimately be known for being a man of one word:

12/3/2007 - iPod Touch Commercial

I received my iPod Touch last week and I am in love with it. It's my first iPod and I can see why millions of people are into these music players by Apple (and why Apple's stock is soaring!). Even though I'm not a huge music lover or audiophile, I can appreciate having all my music in my pocket instead of swapping dozens of CDs in portable CD players. Actually, what I'm using the most of on the Touch is the Safari web browser. It's just so useful to whip out the iPod to check a webpage or two for the information you need, instead of booting up the old desktop or even laptop computer. Again, with the SDK coming out in February, this thing will really be a full-fledged mobile computer with almost limitless possibilities.

I'm sure most of you have seen the iPod Touch commercial that's hitting the airwaves for the past month. What you might not know is that commercial is based on a YouTube video created by an Apple fan by the name of Nick Haley. Apple loved his commercial so much that they flew him out to the coast to help them re-make the commercial for the national airwaves. This, of course, is another example of the power of YouTube. While I think the commercial is alright, I really, REALLY wish they had used another song choice... like the one shown in this video:



Yes, that's right... it's "The Touch" by Stan Bush. Now, only Transformers nerds like myself would fully appreciate the song choice, but I do think it fits the product being sold.

9/14/2007 - Soundwave: The Touch

Rated R for using the F-Word (yeah, only three times, but that would have made Die Hard 4 a Rated R movie too)

Despite being a GREAT popcorn movie, Transformers lacked a little something that would have made it a classic. For me, I guess that it did not have enough nostalgia factor. Having Peter Cullen back as Optimus Prime was nice, but we only heard the classic transforming sound once (I thought that we should hear it every time Prime transforms). One thing they should have really done is bring back an old favorite of everybody's: Soundwave. So what if they don't make cassette player boomboxes anymore? They turned Frenzy in a CD player even though CD's are almost out of fashion these days.

Soundwave was great as Megatron's right-hand man... some would say their relationship went further than that. But the coolest thing about Soundwave was his voice. While every Transformer voice actor spoke through some kind of synthesizer to sound robotic, Soundwave sounded the most robotic. You'd recognize it instantly upon hearing it. Yeah, he couldn't do much in the action arena, but that's why he had his little henchmen cassettes.

His omission in the movie did not go unnoticed by fans, though. Here's a hilarious skit of what happened after Soundwave got rejected by Michael Bay, Inc.



Oh, and one more thing... WHY DIDN'T THEY INCLUDE THE SONG "THE TOUCH"??? Now that would have put the DVD into the "must buy" column for me. So it's a bit cheesy, but they could have at least made Bumblebee play it on the radio for like two seconds...

6/25/2007 - cosplay transformers

Transformers is back this summer and this time as a live action movie. I, for one, am really looking forward to it. If you haven't read my take on the original Transformers movie from 1986, it's HERE. Anyway, this year has been kinda mixed as far as movies go for me. I was going to watch all the Marvel movies, of course, starting with Ghost Rider. Boy, I should have waited for the rental for that one. Whoever thought that a middle-aged Nicolas Cage would be a good Johnny Blaze (who should be in his twenties) must've been under the influence of something. One of the frustrating things about the movie was that the director, Mark Steven Johnson, said that he was hampered by the studio when he made Daredevil and that he had more freedom in Ghost Rider. And yet, Daredevil was a LOT better movie than Ghost Rider. Ugh, I hate giving Ben Affleck any credit, but he was a lot more believable as Matt Murdock than Nic Cage as Johnny Blaze.

The second Marvel movie was Spider-Man 3, and I was really psyched for it. The first was Spider-Man was great, especially in setting up the origin of Spider-Man. The second one was a little overrated for me, but I still enjoyed it and it had probably the greatest one-on-one fight scenes in a comic book movie. After the first two, I really trusted Raimi to give us a great Part 3. Well, for me, it was good but not great. Like everyone says, it seemed like Raimi wanted it to be the last movie in a trilogy for him and threw everything at it, when he really didn't need to. I mean, it was cool seeing Gwen Stacy and Venom, but if you're not going to pay proper respects to their storylines, save them for the next movie. Also, as a semi-purist of the comics (okay, I don't know if you can be a semi-purist), I was really disappointed with the way they retconned Spidey's origin. If they're going to turn Uncle Ben's death into AN ACCIDENT, then that totally takes away Spidey's original motivation for being a hero! Ugh! Oh well, I'll still get the DVD, because it was a tour-de-force in terms of the visuals and the action.

The third Marvel movie was Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and I had lowered my expectations of it because I thought the first one was pure fluff. I really hated the lead "actors" of Ioan Gruffudd and Jessica Alba because I thought (and still think) they didn't fit the parts. I actually had high hopes that Julian McMahon would be a good Dr. Doom, but I was disappointed there too. Well, I'm glad that they seemed to learn from a lot of the mistakes of the first movie, because the second movie was actually quite good. It's not the best superhero movie (I'd probably put it at the bottom of the first tier), but it was pretty fun. Especially during the parts where the Surfer shows up. Doug Jones deserves all the kudos he received for his kinetic performance, and I only wish that they used his voice instead of Morph-- oops, Laurence Fishburne's.

So that brings us to Transformers, which can sort-of be considered as the fourth Marvel movie of 2007 since the original Transformers cartoon was a Marvel co-production. The trailers have looked pretty good up to now, showing a lot of giant robots fighting and stuff blowing up Michael Bay style. What I'm really happy about, though, is how they've thrown a bone to the fans of the old cartoon by casting Peter Cullen as the voice of Optimus Prime. Peter did such a great job in the original cartoon and for many, he was the voice of God!

Today's video should also appeal to the old fans. It's a group of cosplayers in Transformers outfits. But these aren't ordinary costumes... after all, how could you make a Transformers costume without the ability to transform? Now, you may be thinking, "how could you make a robot costume turn into a vehicle and still have a person inside it?" Well, for these Transformers freaks (I use that term affectionately), if there's a will, there's a way:



I should have learned by now not to be amazed.

5/27/2007 - Optimus Prime vs. Megatron (2 videos)

Transformers The Movie (animated) came out when I was ten years old, the perfect age for getting sucked into the cross-platform marketing hype that was Transformers. The synergy of transformable vehicles, robots, and the cartoon that featured these action figures is something that the advertising geniuses of today cannot recreate. Oh, they're going to attempt to do so with the new live-action movie, but kids just don't have as much interest in action figures in general as we did back then.

I didn't get to see Transformers The Movie in the theaters due to circumstances I cannot remember, but I do remember renting the movie three times (purchasing movies were crazy expensive back then) and watching it over and over. People generally focus on how unusual it was for major characters to actually die in the movie, but for a Robotech fan like me, it was nothing new. What hooked me in was the animation... it's something that you just won't see these days because of CGI. It's my theory that animators hate drawing the straight lines that are necessary to portray these robots. It's a shame since all of the recent "animated" Transformers shows pale in comparison to the old-school animation.

The highlight of the Transformers movie was, of course, the epic fight between Optimus Prime and Megatron. This was the fight all the cartoon fans were waiting for but never really got a chance to see. I'm not sure if the movie got it's PG rating because of this fight, but it's pretty brutal for a kid's movie:



SPOILER ALERT: Yes, Optimus Prime did die as a result from this fight. So did Megatron, but he was reborn as Galvatron soon after. Of course, that caused a lot of controversy back then because Optimus was a good guy... not just that, he was the LEADER of the good guys! It was a lot for us pre-teens to accept.

But I digress... as I've said before, we have so many tools available to us to pay tribute to our nostalgic whims. One of them is MUGEN, a PC program that is sort of an open-source fighting-game engine that allows people to customize sprites and animation to use them in their own fighting game. You want to see Ryu (Street Fighter) vs. Scorpion (Mortal Kombat)? No problem! How about Hulk (Marvel vs. Capcom) vs. Thing? Just draw your own Thing sprites! Of course, it didn't take long for someone to recreate the Optimus Prime vs. Megatron fight on MUGEN... and here it is:



It was a nice "touch" to include the Stan Bush music!