MidGroundRadio

“My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.” --Hedley Lamar 

Okay, maybe it’s not that bad, but I’ve got a bunch of crap running through my head, and it all wants to play at once, which means I watch old episodes of Lost and do nothing. But let’s not dwell on that. In order to expedite things, I’m declaring next week Noir Week. Because I can.

I have a bit of an affinity for the Noir genre for some reason, and I think it would be a hoot to have a week of Noir stuff up here on MidGroundRadio. Some of the reviews will even be for things that we won’t make any money off of. (Shocking, I know.) But to make up for that some of the pieces will be straight up ways to make your money ours, without a whole lot of effort on our part. So, it all balances in the end.

We’ll have some movies, books, podcasts, and comics that all pay tribute to the Noir ethic, and it will all culminate with a new Podcast on Saturday of Kevin and I talking about a film that is only dubiously Noir, but what the hell.

Speaking of Podcasts, we have a request to make them downloadable. I’m working on that, both from the site itself and via iTunes. The trouble with using iTunes is twofold, first you don’t come to the site, and that messes with numbers and second, I have to deal with Apple, the most annoying bastards on the planet. The good thing about iTunes is it’s pretty simple to get the podcast up there. But I will make certain that by the next podcast you can download us.

UPDATE: Check out down below, podcast can be grabbed right there. Much easier than I thought it would be. iTunes still not up yet, because I still haven't worked up the energy to deal with Apple, yet.  

That’s all for now. Check back this Saturday morning for a new cartoon and make sure you have us in your RSS feed or just keep coming back to the site next week for all of the updates.

            If I were asked to sum up TF2 in one word, it would be ludicrous, edging into ridiculous at times, but, at that point, I have already gone beyond one word and my feelings are a little more complex than even that estimation. TF2 is the perfect example of what a competent director can do with a subpar script.   It is definitely worth seeing in the theater, do not  walk, run to see it, but if I had problems with the Abrams’ Star Trek script, TF2 is a glaring example of why scripts should go through a good edit or two. Do not expect Shakespeare but do expect a ton of Michael Bay homage and explosions.

            Transformers 2 is completely over the top.  Explosions, action, characters, flying around everywhere to the point it becomes a cacophony of motion barreling towards the finish.  I lost track of what transformer was who, struggled to identify more than three of the autobot group and, in the end, just gave up.  The best parts of this movie are the fight scenes, especially the battle at the end, filmed in Oliver Stone realism.  It definitely had that ‘fog of war’ feeling and was completely believable. 

            Where I have problems with TF2 is the script.  I found myself consciously editing the film while I was viewing it and that is never a good thing. There is this movement in Hollywood to inject humor into every movie that leaves their doors, whether or not the subject matter needs it and this movie suffers because of it.

            For example, there was absolutely no need for any of the stereotypical teen going to college humor.  Sam’s mother did not need to eat marijuana brownies and have the extensive crying scenes.  The circumstances leading up to the “girl finds boyfriend in fake ‘in flagrante’” did not need too happen.  The roommate who is “an internet entrepreneur only doing it to meet chics” was not needed.  The exposition telling us why there are so many hot women in the dormitory was quizzical.  Moviegoers are sophisticated enough to realize every college scene in every movie is only going to feature hot women; we accept that and have long moved on. Brief one or two sentence explanations would have sufficed for any of these examples and moved the story along nicely without all the eye rolling I had to do. The actors, to their credit, work their collective asses off to make these poorly written scenes work.

            As for the robot scenes, I have to address one of the big issues reviewers seem to have about the film, the twins Skids and Mudflap. The internet is a-buzz with all the racial stereotype talk surrounding these two characters. I found these two comical and completely over the top like the rest of the movie. To me, they looked and acted more like gremlins than human beings. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, in the theater laughed at them whenever they did or said something stupid on the screen. If anyone was uncomfortable with their portrayal, they hid it well. The fact that two of the smallest transformers take on the largest one by themselves and thus showing true valor is not even mentioned by many of the reviews I read.

            I have to ask, did we really need robot testicles?  Really?  Little jokes can cut the tension in a film when it is needed, and it has been used to great affect in films like “Independence Day” when Will Smith goes off on the alien who downed his ship, but too many of these scenes scream “look at how clever and crude we can be! Look! Are you looking? Please look…”

            Anatomically correct robots aside, the CG was astounding and even better than the first movie.  Transfomers as real non-biological entities were sold to the hilt and very believable.

            Do not even get me started on the perpetually clean white pants.  Who in their right mind thought we wouldn’t notice THAT….??

            Overall, I enjoyed Transformers 2. A little editing, a few rewritten lines, and some trimming of the levity would have tightened this movie into an on-the-edge-of-my-seat action film.  As it stands, this is the first movie this year where I walked out of the theater thinking, “This is a Summer Blockbuster”.  I for one look forward to seeing this movie again in the theater, the DVD, and the benevolent rule of our Autobot overlords.