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By Jon, July 26, 2010 7:00 pm

Of all the items in my Transformers collection there is one thing figure that I love above all others, my original G1 Grimlock. For a kid, Grimlock was just about the coolest thing ever in that he was a robot that turned into a dinosaur. Over twenty years I’ve held onto Grimlock through several house moves, high school, college, graduate school, and even marriage. I even have gotten my wife to engage in the “Cesium Salami/Beryllium Bologna” dialogue from Transformers: The Movie.

A year ago rumors were swirling that Hasbro has deemed the United States worthy of an American release of the Takara Tomy MP-8 Grimlock. This was huge news due to the fact that the Japanese version ran upwards of $150 and was very hard to come by. Over that year there were further rumors of cancellations and who would exactly be carrying this new Masterpiece Grimlock, as Toys R Us were initially slated to carry it. It wasn’t until earlier this month that we had confirmation that it would be a and that it would be a Toys R Us Exclusive and sold through Entertainment Earth during San Diego Comic Con.

My patience paid of late last week as I was finally able to pre-order Masterpiece Grimlock through TRU.com. Unfortunately he will take anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks to arrive in my Den of Nerdery.

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By Jon, July 10, 2010 10:26 pm

Despite my enormous love for the Transformers franchise, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen left a bad taste in my mouth. It was a product of the writer’s strike and seemed to be a couple of big action sequences strung together with a hackneyed storyline.

Did I still buy some of the toys? Of course I did, because that’s what fanboys like me do … we bitch about the movie but still go out and purchase the merchandise.

While I was well aware that production had begun for Transformers 3, and I was doing my best to stay spoiler free once again. However, when I stopped by TFW2005 (my Transformers fansite of choice), I had found that board member 245am was able to snap pictures on set in Chicago … of Optimus Prime with his motherfucking trailer!

And not only did 245am uncover this significant spoiler, but also took some pictures of some of the other Autobots in addition to what appeared to be NASCAR racers armed to the teeth. Fan speculation has that they could be Stunticons … which could lead to another combiner in Menasor. From 245am’s set report:

Saw a chase scene being filmed with several Autobots racing behind what looked like demolition derby cars… closed top with plastic net windows over the door windows, scrapped together bodies, etc. Mostly black with some color paint. My first thought was they were filming crew vehicles, and they might have been, but they also had sponsor decals (Gillette I saw for sure) and big racing numbers (again, 13 I saw for sure) and figured they wouldn’t put those on cars that weren’t being filmed. My first thought when I saw them: Stunticons, but that’s total conjecture.

Michael Bay may have gotten me excited about the next Transformers flick … but we all know better than to trust him. Serious Bay, do NOT fuck this up.

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By Jon, June 10, 2010 12:45 am

While my love of Transformers was not dampened by the ridiculousness that was Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, it has me less than faithful in His Bayness’ ability to right ship and deliver a slightly less shitty third movie.

This past week it came to light that Bay wanted to tear up the National Mall and set off a series of planned explosions in the area.

Bill Line, Park Service spokesman, said the producers “have asked to do some things that simply are not done on the National Mall,” among them staging a “car race” along the Mall’s gravel paths and flooding it with artificial light in order to shoot at night.

“A lot of this could be more appropriately shot in a Hollywood studio,” Line said. “The National Mall is not an area in which Americans come to see high-tech action movies being shot.”

Considering that Bay pretty much has the entire Department of Defense on speed dial and I find it rather amazing that he can’t get this done. Have we found his Achilles’ Heel? Will the cutbacks in on location shooting have a significant impact on the plot? Who knows … and should I care at this point?

Credit [Transformers Live Action Movie Blog]

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By Jon, July 8, 2009 9:28 am

Before I lapse into a coma after coming off of night work, here’s the video of Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) reading the “Top Ten Things That Sound Cool When Spoken By A Giant Robot” on the Late Show with David Letterman.

After viewing this clip, I firmly believe that Cullen should do the voice-over work for everything. Screw James Earl Jones, Dennis Hasbert, and Keifer Sutherland, I will sheepishly purchase anything that Optimus is hawkin’. Suddenly I have the urge to purchase Jurgens and watch Sex in the City.

Credit: GeekStuffOG via Twitter

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By Jon, June 29, 2009 3:38 am

About three years ago when I first started attending cons I became aware of a local group of artists in the Philadelphia area that I absolutely love, with one such talent being Dave Perillo. He’s an awesome guy with a great style that has a knack for picking on those most minute idiosyncrasies of the characters he draws.

So this year at Wizard World Philly I asked Dace to start off my new sketchbook with his take on the greatest of all Autobots, Optimus Prime. Even though he posted it already over on his blog, I figured that since I’m the owner of said sketch I might as well do the same here.

You can check out more of Dave’s work on his blog Montygog’s Art-O-Rama, or even purchase some of his from his online store. Tell him Jon sent ya.

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By Jon, June 29, 2009 1:31 am

After two years of spoiler-free living this past week I saw TF:RotF not once, but twice (including an IMAX showing) and have yet to come to a conclusion as to how i feel about the His Bayness’ latest addition to his IMDB page. There were things that I loved about it while other gave me douche chills. Below I’ll list the top five things I liked/didn’t like in TF:RotF.

Five Things I Didn’t Like:

1) The Twins. It’s pretty unanimous across the Interwebz, the way Mudflap & Skids were characterized they would have been better off having a lawn jockey as their alt-mode. They did nothing to move the plot along, and took up valuable screen time from other newer and far more interesting Autobots.

2) Not Enough Sideswipe. Easily the coolest of the new arrivals, he kicked ass in the Shanghai sequence only to be relegated to the periphery later on in the film.

3) WTF is with the Decepticon Space Ship? So Megatron is reborn and immediately flies to the moons of Saturn where Starscream was holed up making decepti-babies with The Fallen? We couldn’t flesh this out more?

4) Not enough non-combat interaction between human NEST personnel & Autobots. Clearly they’d been fighting side by side for two years, but could we have maybe seen them interacting in a non-combat situation? Have Ironhide tells stories of encountering petrorabbits on Alpha Nine or maybe have Epps teach them Texas Hold ‘em.

5) Too Much Dick & Fart Humor. I love dick jokes as much as the next guy, but the sheer number of them in TF:RotF was staggering. Between the humping of Megan Fox’s leg (really can’t blame Wheelie though), the Twins stating that Leo had a “pubic fro”, or maybe Devastors fucking testicles! There is a place for it, but it was distracting and unnecessary.

Five Things I Liked:

1) Sideswipe. Refer to #2 above.

2) Optimus Primes’ Entrance Into Shanghai. “We need Big Boy!” Bad. Ass. Only Chuck Norris would make a cooler entrance into a hotzone.

3) The Optimus/Jetfire Link Up. Sure Jetfire may not have done much for me, but the powering up of Optimus was a mighty cool sequence.

4) Soundwave. Did he eject Ravage? Yup. Frank Welker for voice talents? Yup. His new mode served his ultimate purpose of espionage quite well. Sadly they didn’t modulate his voice, leaving him to sound more like Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget.

5) Bumblebee. So what if he can’t talk, I enjoy his “speaking” through sound clips. The sequence with Sam & Alice after the party was humorous. He was my favorite as a kid and remains so to this day, even if he is a Camaro.

TF: RotF was enjoyable for what it was. I think His Bayness ought to just take a Executive Producer credit on the next go around (someone is going to have to take the hit for the Twins). While there were more robots, just as he promised they weren’t all necessarily fleshed out or even properly introduced. We do need a little substance every once in a while.

This movie is and will continue to make an insane amount of money and while it may not be viewed as a good film, it will be financially successful. I’ll give it a ** 3/4 stars …

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By Jon, June 18, 2009 9:48 pm

Transformers fans remember (often with great ire) Wheelie, the juvenile prose speaking Autobot first encountered in Transformers: The Movie way back in 1986. He was small orange and quite frankly kind of annoying. Evidence of which can be seen below:

Now, in this exclusive clip from His Bayness’ blog we encounter the ‘new’ Wheelie. He remains diminutive in size, but has an obnoxious New York accent. Seriously? As ridiculous as the scene may be, it Megan Fox in a tight shirt and cut off really help keep it afloat.

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By Jon, June 16, 2009 4:51 pm

Granted I haven’t been keeping up with the latest news and reviews of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, but it doesn’t mean that I’m not jonesing for it. A while ago I made the promise to myself not to spoil or otherwise ruin the movie for myself. I have to say that I’ve done a pretty good job so far.

Here’s the most recent TV spot, featuring a lot of what we’ve already seen with the exception of the last 2 to 3 seconds which features Optimus’ gigantic firearm with its equally large caliber ammunition.

And have I mentioned how my wife went out and purchased opening night tickets for the two of us? She went out to theaters twice with me to see the first one (once in IMAX). She does in fact rule mightily.

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By Jon, May 19, 2009 10:03 am

With Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen due out in little more than a month, new TV spots have started to hit that include newer effects sequences and insight to the storyline. And for the record, I’ve been mindful of my pledge to stay spoiler free … and these don’t count as spoilers.

There are three new spots floating around, two of which I’ve embedded below. Credit goes to the gang over at Film School Rejects.

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By Jon, May 2, 2009 11:59 pm

So this will end up being the third post I’ve done on the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen full-length trailer. I know I’m pushing it, but if they big boys can do it why can’t I?

By this point pretty much all of the fan-sites and movie blogs have run HD screen caps. Now it’s my turn; however I only picked out only some of the images I found to be the most interesting.

The renders on Bumblebee look much better, I’m still wonder if they do any mo-cap?

Oh shit, looks like the Fallen is reallllly pissed

Optimus’ hero pose

Bumblebee, Skids, & Mudflap on the Ben Franklin Bridge!

Again we Bumblebee, Skids, & Mudflap going all Indy

Are the Constructicons appear to be reviving Megatron?

BB in Battle Mode going after a Constructicon

Optimus upgraded to two laser swords. Nice.

Optimus, battle weary

Jetfire, a geriatric Cybertronian.

Apparently Ratchet is actually going to do something this go around.

Megatron, notice the sweet arm cannon chasing Sam (again)