tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580771530471531574.post950724250988892338..comments2023-07-12T09:16:45.437-04:00Comments on The Cinema: "Why Does Michael Bay Get to Keep On Making Movies?"Ted Pigeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04789041055263853568noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580771530471531574.post-31485555424174981442007-07-11T14:14:00.000-04:002007-07-11T14:14:00.000-04:00Sounds like an interesting experience you've had w...Sounds like an interesting experience you've had with Bay, Piper. Unfortunately, I did not get around to seeing <I>Transformers</I> over the holiday (I saw <I>Ratatouille</I> instead), and surprisingly enough, I still am itching to see it. There's something painful-to-watch yet attractive about the trailers. I can't quite figure out what it is. The movie looks like a Bayified piece of movie product, complete with exaggerated caricatures, the typical perfect-bodied leading lady who Bay has cars break down for so as to stage shots of positioning her arching body to open the hood. You know what I mean. Yet, like I grapple with in my post, there is still something attracting me to this movie. Maybe its the very things I'm talking about, the surface level superficiality that I am so critical of. But just because I'm aware of it, that doesn't make me above it I guess. Nor do I really want to be... completely at least. Still, it's hard not to feel a little guilty being turned about by Bay's images. And that's what is so interesting. <BR/><BR/>As for your point about Verhoeven, I think you're exactly right. Nobody makes mindless action so damn desirable. Total Recall and Starship Troopers are movies in which the violence is so high, exaggerated, and fetishized that I find them interesting on blood-spewing and dismemberment alone. Yet Verhoeven uses these in-your-face details and tells interesting stories with them. <BR/><BR/>The master of violent images, in my mind, though, is David Cronenberg, who finds a strange, abstract, and primal connection between violence and sexuality in his images, not as incongruent but as congruent. No one can imbue images with fear, desire, grotesqueness, and eroticism all at the same time like him.Ted Pigeonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04789041055263853568noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580771530471531574.post-13787658551157359982007-07-09T21:20:00.000-04:002007-07-09T21:20:00.000-04:00I have been a longtime hatta of Bay. I used to wor...I have been a longtime hatta of Bay. I used to work with a commercial director who did some CSI work with Bruckheimer when the Bruckheimer/Bay partnership was tight. I spent on evening in LA bagging on Bay and he wouldn't have any part of it. In fact, he told me to quiet down. It was kind of creepy and funny at the same time.<BR/><BR/>I agree with you that Bad Boys and The Rock weren't that bad and as action goes, they were big fun. But after that, something went away or maybe Bay got a bit too big for his britches. I often compare Bay's quick upcoming in Hollywood with Eli Roth's quick surge in Horror. It never ends up good. <BR/><BR/>Anyway, I saw Transformers yesterday and as I wrote in my post today, it's important to remember that Bay was one hell of a commercial director. It's no surprise that his shots looks so pretty. But if you watch his more recent movies, they are very commercial like. A series of pretty vignettes that amount to nothing.<BR/><BR/>And as far as violent-glorifying directors go, I think nobody does it better than Verhoeven. Nobody does an action sequence better than Bay, though. There were a few minutes in Transformers that were really amazing. But the characters and the story are terrible. And I'm just not going to resign myself to accepting that we must give up story and acting for action. We can have it all. Die-Hard proved it so.PIPERhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13054305230216613759noreply@blogger.com