In Which This Was Made Largely For China And To Hurt Megan Fox's Feelings

Cavities

by DICK CHENEY

Transformers: Age of Extinction
dir. Michael Bay
165 minutes

I don't throw the word genius around a lot, unless someone is washing my feet or my car. We have long needed an American director who was absolutely fearless, and now we have found him. Michael Bay is willing to destroy his actors to get what he wants onscreen. What exactly is Michael Bay's heart's desire? He wanted to make a movie about a love triangle between a father, his daughter and her Australian boyfriend.

In this he succeeded with Transformers: Age of Extinction. Mark Wahlberg's daughter informs us that she has been "taking care" of Marky Mark since his wife passed. (A robot winks meaningfully after that.) It is a poor choice of words at best, a mild and innocuous felony at worst. Unfortunately, Tessa Yeager (Nicola Peltz) had to die:

This is actually how Natalie Wood died IMO

The lifespan of women in Transformers is limited in the extreme. They get tired and fatigued from running and screaming for help, and heart disease claims them in the end. Megan Fox has actually been dead for over a decade. In the last Transformers movie, which I believe was subtitled Transformers: My Pea Is Your Pod, Megan Fox and Shia LaBeouf perished in the warmth of Optimus Prime's nasal cavity, requiring this reboot.

Not a single person from any of those previous Transformers movies is even peripherally involved in Age of Extinction, but all of the characters still talk the exact same.

Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) owns a fledgling robotics company that has not produced a single working robot. When he meets Optimus Prime (Christian Bale), he immediately begins planning to steal the alien technology and use it for his own nefarious means. His household is "under control", because after his wife died, he prohibited both himself and his daughter from ever dating, which I believe is both illegal and extremely creepy unless you're Indian.

She couldn't even get a flirtatious moment with Mark Wahlberg? Racist.

Because Transformers is way more successful outside of America, Bay has included a variety of token ethnicities. After the blowback from his ghetto Transformers incident from the NAACP (they later honored him with a lifetime achievement award) Mr. Bay has steered clear of including any black characters in the entire movie. There is not even an African-American dinosaur robot. 

Instead, Bay really appreciates Asian audiences. That's why he has included a female executive (Li Bingbing) in Age of Extinction, who Stanley Tucci regards as "extremely impressive." Naturally, even though she is his subordinate, he hits on her throughout the film and eventually she seems open to his disgusting advances. (How do you think Michael Bay obtained children?)

There is also a Samurai transformer who appears to be attired like the cover of a Midwestern edition of The Art of War. His accent is so unbelievably sinister and racist that it makes Aunt Jemima look progressive, (Unfortunately, I learned this is Ken Watanabe's actual accent. Sorry Ken.)

I can't feel sympathy for the pricks who tow cars. I really can't this time you guys.

Inside of every Transformer is the life force known as the spark; "we cah that a soul" Wahlberg bleats. In a massive alien ship he finds special transformer killing guns and turns into Rambo.  Cade sends his daughter away but she comes back to fight on the side of the good robots. Kelsey Grammar tries to have the daughter gunned down for no real reason by the evil island spirit on Lost and Mark Wahlberg is like, "Ya tried to kull my dawghter." I miss Dr. Frasier Crane.

The dinosaur part of the story goes something like this: the transformers killed the dinosaurs. The only reason they offered is because they have a less than respectful view of the artistic aspects of The Land Before Time. Mark Wahlberg acts like he would rather be anywhere, showcasing an intense contempt for the man he is portraying. Incidentally "Cade" is a very difficult word for a robot to say, and Optimus Prime goes out of his way not to utter Cade's name so as not to confuse his ethnic Autobots.

Mr. Bay, remember that time you gave that extra brain damage as you screaming, "Autobots Assemble" at her while dressed like Nick Fury?

Even though Cade's daughter Tessa is only 17, she has developed an intense emotional connection with a race car driver. God knows what they have in common or where they met, but it's up to this fellow to prove his worthiness to the girl's father. This disturbing wooing of permission is not only deeply retrograde and sexist, it occurs during a car chase.

The action culminates in nothing very exciting. The last film ended with a set piece that destroyed the city of Chicago, which was at least therapeutic. Age of Extinction concludes suddenly after one of the robots is destroyed; I believe the robot's name was Gastroenteritistron. He wanted to bring Optimus back to his "creator," which is probably Morgan Freeman in a suit if the last ten years of cinema is any indication.

There was no one with brown eyes in this entire movie, it was like a 21st century 'Triumph of the Will'

In the end, Optimus decides he is really very sick of humanity, and would do anything he could to get away from them. He watched his Autobot friends hacked and divested of their Happy Meals and metal belongings, and in doing so he witnessed the destruction of his entire way of life. Age of Extinction had the largest ever opening in China. Every invading culture is quietly subsumed and irrevocably altered by the victims it claims.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in an undisclosed location who misses Hot Pie.

"If The Morning Comes" - Transfer (mp3)

"We Don't Have To Be Nice Anymore" - Transfer (mp3)

In Which We're Really Down On Optimus Prime

Falling From A Great Height

by ALEX CARNEVALE

Transformers: Dark of the Moon
dir. Michael Bay
684 minutes

Are you constitutionally unable to tell Josh Duhamel and Johnny Knoxville apart? If Chris Evans were also put in that room and had not shaved for a week or more, would he blend in as seamlessly as the wallpaper? Is Frances McDormand's agent suffering a foreclosure on her home?

Does anyone else get the sense that if Shia LaBoeuf were four inches taller, he would have made a great Boromir?

this happened to barbara hershey a lot in those days

I'm working on a John Malkovich oral history. (It will be done after I give Agatha Christie the Roald Dahl treatment.) Don't you want to go back to those halcyon days? Let's all find out what it was really like to be on the set with Liam Neeson during The Man in the Iron Mask. Whoever greenlit A Portrait of a Lady deserves something; perhaps a nice home in the suburbs?

For the better part of a half hour, LaBeouf slides down the side of a Chicago skyscraper while it is coming down, in a cutting edge satire of 9/11. Not a single piece of glass is embedded into anyone's body, in fact it seems to have given them a glossy sheen. You can light a match from the glare off the pearly countenance of the actress who replaced Megan Fox. You don't want to do something after Megan Fox has done it, you want to do it well before or not at all.

it's easy to confuse megatron and ellen pompeo because they have the same wrinkle lines

Optimus Prime gets all of ten lines in this movie, and it has a running time roughly equivalent to The Sorrow and the Pity. I used to watch Transformers, it was my second favorite after Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I was very into Raphael, I thought he was like a straight Dagny Taggart. I read The Fountainhead when I worked at an aquarium one summer and now whenever I smell penguin feces I feel a stirring call to achievement.

If you openly admit your last movie sucked, why not maybe change it up a little? I want to know what Major William Lennox does when he's off duty. Just hang out? Get his Lexapro prescription from CVS? Duhamel never takes the earpiece off once during the entire running time of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, which probably beats the record set by Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible. The fucking microphone was almost in his mouth at points.

putting michael bay in charge of the space program might be the right move for all concerned

Frances McDormand begins to attain a growing confidence in Sam Witwicky (25-year old Shia LaBoeuf). She praises him constantly, especially when he uncovers a plan that the Decepticons have to transport the planet Cybertron into our solar system. They develop a mother-son esque relationship, because Sam's real mother is something of comedic joke. He dreads his parents' visits and feels discouraged when they mock him for not being employed after his graduation from college.

this exact pose is in every adaptation of a john irving novel

His girlfriend Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) surprises him at his new job, telling everyone she sees "I'm Sam's girlfriend." She wants him to be happy in his work. When, unexpectedly, he shows up at her job, she's thrown off. Carly's close relationship with her boss Dylan (Patrick Dempsey) is a major red flag for Sam, and he overreacts. Looking to mediate the situation, Dylan gives them both cars. It's a nice gesture, but ill timed. Every five to ten minutes, Carly gets in or out of a car that's transforming into a larger car.

The last sequence in Transformers: Dark of Moon depicts the destruction of Chicago at great length, working in the disintegration of several prominent landmarks. The "heroes" destroy a teleportation machine crafted by the Einstein of autobots that is worth more than their lives. For some reason, the Decepticons spare the entire rest of earth, giving every indication they are not huge fans of Rahm Emanuel (Sacha Baron Cohen).

When one machine touches another machine, there's still two machines.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording. He last wrote in these pages about Super 8. He tumbls here and twitters here.

"Why Don't You Call Me?" - James Blake (mp3)

"To Care (Like You)" - James Blake (mp3)

"Give Me My Month" - James Blake (mp3)

In Which We Sympathize Purely With Decepticons

Robots In Disguise

by ALEX CARNEVALE

Not a single human being dies during Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which is something of a major achievement considering the film represents something like thirty-eight separate military engagements. War isn't hell, is Michael Bay's main message here, appropriate for a director with an IQ barely above retarded.

Is Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen the most boring movie I've ever seen? Probably not -- it shows the pyramids, a human achievement I have yet to witness in person. Occasionally, we get a flattering angle of Megan Fox. That's about the run of it. There is still the collected oeuvre of Tyler Perry to dull our mind and senses. But it is up there, quite high up there.

It is amazing to think that 200 million dollars spent on this film couldn't rescue it from being a dreadful bore, but it is. Asimov and Heinlein brought intelligent machines and war to Terran shores, and Bay completely tears apart any interest we might have in them. What could 200 million dollars have done for cancer research, or buying me an Xbox 360? We will never know.

can we execute him and bernie madoff together plzStakes is central core of drama - without it, there's only so much debris can interest us. At the end of the first Transformers film, we felt this kind of gnawing disinterest in what had up until then been a fairly potent departure from the usual special effects-related mayhem. Optimus Prime and Megatron battled, and I had a fairly tough time differentiating between the two. Optimus had a shade of blue in his coat. A handsome creature, a pretty, gravelly-voiced machine.

If you modify the tenor of your voice to sound like Peter Cullen, the dude who does Optimus Prime, you can create more excitement in your kitchen than this movie did with oodles of cash and a signed contract with Megan Fox. But basically there are more robots coming, and the government doesn't get that they are different from the good autobots. Really? Have they ever refused to give in to an automaker before?

For good measure, Bay throws in twin dumb robots with gold teeth and African-American voiceovers who don't know how to read and spend most of the time threatening to cap each other and speaking in jive. Sigh. I realize Bay despises political correctness, but did Jar Jar Binks change the world for the better? The Twins help Shia LaBeouf find something called The Matrix. Hmm, that sounds familiar. Was it the turning point of the second National Treasure film?

Really, it's all just an elaborate prelude to get robots whizzing and buzzing on each other, in each other. Two robots fighting each other is satisfying momentarily, like watching felines whirling into messy balls of fur. After a while, you just want to the fighting to stop.

This is most assuredly not what the American military wants however. Know you what our 'government' spends on such things? The opening scene of Revenge of the Fallen features the pursuit of a rogue Decepticon, a military operation that must have cost billions. Guys, can't you just let a Decepticon be?

War is even more of a specious creature in this world, where the persecution of creatures known formally as Decepticons continues unabated. We find out later that some of them aren't so evil, but nevermind that - one is sucking sand into its mouth for no real reason! Admire the money-making power of your not-talented overlord, Michael "I Physiologically Lack a Penis" Bay!

Autobots are sympathetic to the American military insofar as their soldiers attack and destroy the Autobots' main competition for 'energon' (Transformer fuel, smells like eggs and Meg Ryan), the Decepticons. Autobots are brothers in full to Army men who looks like Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson. Why do I care about these people? Anyway, what fun for these boys to play soldiers in world where no soldier dies. Come to real world - we can use you!

michael, you left the lens cap on againOne life form needs the sun intact, to fuel machines which empty themselves, destroy atmosphere and other life forms. (I speak of humans, Autobot sympathizers.) Another life form, prettier but without portrait in Maxim, desires sun to break it apart so that it may provide lifefuel for the resurrection of its home planet, Cybertron. Interesting moral conundrum? Michael, don't sleep during our meeting, please.

don't worry: you are safe here. according to percentages, you account for 53.8 percent of this film's box office"Alien wars are of no concern to us." Michael Bay has a dumb Obama flack say this - flack prefers negotiation, reconciliation, surrender - but the flack has the right idea. Here is a war between two forces. Perhaps we should wait and see where it takes us, before committing more than we have. After all - we're proud owners of General Motors now. They need all the money taxpayers can spare!

The same reason the original Transformers was such an unusual thrill is why Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen sucks balls. Michael's cinematic modus operandi is to throw manic scenes together without transitions of any kind - sort of how I write reviews of his movies, but nevermind that. A film should cohere more closely than what I write, should offer plausible explanations for how retarded it is. I'm only one man! They had 200 fucking million dollars.

There is a forty minute segment near the end of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen that truly tested my patience. Without irony, joke, or distraction, Bay simply had Megan Fox jiggling her jugglies and running with her hair blowing back in the wind for what seemed like forever. Didn't anybody ask why we needed to watch two kids jog miles through the desert? It's a movie - put them next to where the action is. Maybe a fucking Autobot can carry them? Is that so difficult? It took forty minutes of a rigorous rock soundtrack and sand particles flowing over perfectly made-up faces to end this farce, ruining the career of John Turturro on the way. Do not see this movie!

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording. He tumbls here.

"Triangle Walks (james rutledge edit)" - Fever Ray (mp3)

"Triangle Walks (radio edit)" - Fever Ray (mp3)

"Triangle Walks (tigas radio edit)" - Fever Ray (mp3)