Michael Bay

Please add your comments about Michael Bay on the Fightback. If you don't have an account to post there, let me know and I'll get you one.

I don't think I like Bay at all. For one, his filmmaking is, at best, deeply flawed but, beyond that, he's always issuing frustrating statements, retracting them, revising them, showing all the signs of somebody who doesn't know what he's talking about or, possibly, changes his opinion for money or to curry favour.

Having yesterday whipped up a small publicty storm with his comments about Blu-ray, HD-DVD and Transformers 2, he's now retracted the comments completely. Nikki Finke reported the story but added nothing we couldn't tell from Bay's original statement. Hopefully she'll now get her investigative journalism groove on and find out just what really changed Bay's mind.

Or, to put it another way, did somebody write a cheque, and if so, how big was it?

To somebody with Finke's rolodex it shouldn't take too much digging to find out if Bay was already contracted to Transformer sequels, and what it would have meant for him to pull out, and therefore very possibly reveal his initial threat to be a paper tiger anyway.

Here's Bay's latests statement:

Last night at dinner I was having dinner with three Blu-Ray owners, they were pissed about no Transformers Blu-Ray and I drank the kool aid hook line and sinker. So at 1:30 in the morning I posted - nothing good ever comes out of early am posts mind you - I over reacted. I heard where Paramount is coming from and the future of HD and players that will be close to the $200 mark which is the magic number. I like what I heard.

As a director, I'm all about people seeing films in the best quality possible, and I saw and heard firsthand people upset about a corporate decision.

So today I saw 300 on HD-DVD, it rocks!

So I think I might be back on to do Transformers 2!

So, basically, he made an uninformed decision in the first place. No surprises there. Then he posted rashly - "possibly" under some kind of chemical influence. Again, no surprises. Then the world jumped up and down for a bit and HD-DVD got some negative press and, before you know it, Bay's eating his hat and turning 180 degrees. Once more - not really any surprises there either.

I feel quite daft for not predicting all of this yesterday.

Every single statement out of Bay's official site has been an incredible frustration to me. Why is this man one of the most sought after and highly paid film directors in the world? What people think when they hear his name has nothing to do with his individual, specific capabilities or techniques as a filmmaker anyway. What they picture is a big budget action film that emphasises spectacle and excess over anything else. We'd get the same rubbish if somebody decided to bankroll Albert Pyun and surround him with slick technicians too. Bay brings nothing to his films that countless direct-to-DVD hacks wouldn't bring too if they were given the resources and collaborators that Bay has.

But his name means something to people, so he's going to keep getting gigs and big ones too. Adding that brand value is so much more of a concern to studios than getting the best filmmaker for the job. This isn't news, I know, but it is the heart of the Michael Bay problem and after another twelve hours or so of Bay showing his behind, I just had to get it off my chest.

Michael Bay Joins Spielberg In Undermining The Paramount HD-DVD Decision

Something tells me that Transformers is to get a Blu-ray release despite Paramount's recent shirking of the format.

Michael Bay has issued a statement on his forums that he's not going to direct a second Transformers film because "I want people to see my movies in the best formats possible. For them to deny people who have Blu-ray sucks! They were progressive by having two formats. No Transformers 2 for me!"

Either he's saying that Blu-ray is the best format possible, which I'd go with, or he's pegging both HD-DVD and Blu-ray as equally reasonable options, which I'm cool with too, I suppose.

I don't know how much enthusiasm a non-Bay Transformers 2 would garner in the net fanboy community, but on the other hand, I don't know how much of a draw Bay's name is to the man in the street. Besides, with the same superb support from ILM there's countless directors who could turn in a film of similar quality to the first and even a good handful who could do better.

Surely you have some ideas of who would be a better choice. Suggestions please.

[EDIT: Nikki Finke has written a piece on this too, but has sad no more than this post did in the first place. She doesn't even offer a link to the original Bay comment. But hopefully she'll make it something of a talking point? Can this end up working in Blu-ray's favour?]

Movie Minesweeper - The New Broom Edition

- Luis Tosar is to star in Spleen, from first time director Alfonso Zarauzer.

- Don Murphy had posted a response to Michael Bay on his own site, but now... it's gone. From memory: Murphy commented on how he and Tom De Santo had nurtured the Transformers project for years before Bay's involvement; he credited Bay for making the film such a success; he stressed how good he felt the film was. Where's the comment gone? And why? And how true is it that Murphy is 'widely reviled by executives at Paramount and Dreamworks', as reported in The NYTimes? [EDIT: An old statement has been re-linked by Murphy]

- Alex de la Iglesia going to write and direct the film adaptation of The Yellow Mark, a story from the Blake and Mortimer comic book.

- The Icelandic media seem to believe location scouts for the new Star Trek film have come knocking.

- Richard Corliss has published a paen to animation in Time. Might seem a little naive to actual animation fans.

Movie Minesweeper - The Plant A Flag In Hollywoodland Edition

- JoBlo appear to have the first image of an 'alien' from James Cameron's Avatar.

- James McTeigue is attached to direct an adaptation of John Burdett's novel Bangkok 8. The synopsis at Variety makes it sound like a cross between Taxi Driver and The General's Daughter gone Thai. Maybe. The piece also states that McTeigue was an uncredited director on The Invasion - as well as or instead of the Wachowski Bros. I wonder?

- William Wisher is to script the World War II drama Escape of the Pacific Clipper. I see a formation of Second World War aerial actioners coming over the horizon. Will they bomb? (Pun intended).

- Spike Lee is directing Stalag 17 on Broadway.

- More WWII shenanigans with The Lost Squad. The big screen adaptation of the Chris Kirby comic book is to be written and directed by Saint and Mather - or, to give them their full names, Stephen St. Leger and James Mather. You can download a trailer for their short film Prey Alone or check out storyboards and more at the Saint and Mather site. Personally, I'm not impressed. At all.

- David Ondaatje's remake of Hitchcock's The Lodger is set up to go at Sony. Apparently using the same source material as Hitch - Marie Belloc Lownde's novel - this version will, all the same, be updated to a present day LA setting. If you know the passwords (sorry - can't help you, but help me if you can) you can watch some of Ondaatje's shorts online, including the documentary Undressing Hitchcock and Hitch pastiche Waiting for Dr. Maguffin.

- Nostradamus nonsense ahoy in the comic book adaptation The Foundation. Paramount have snapped up the rights and assigned two of the publisher production duties on the film.

- The Fantasia Fest line-up has been unveiled.

- Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. have renewed their pact, with a fresh 1 billion dollar cash injection. Some of this seems set to be wasted on a World of Warcraft movie.

- Djimon Honsou has signed to star in Jeff Wadlow's Get Some. I dare say he won't be taking the lead role of a 'rebellious teen' who joins an underground fight club.

- Rialto Pictures are the leading lights in US theatrical reissues. The Museum of Modern Art in New York is to celebrate the distributor's tenth anniversary by screening a retrospective of their releases. Seventeen films are on the program - I don't know which seventeen, but the full catalogue is online. Some of the greatest films I've ever seen are in that line-up (plus a few heaps of Godard).

- Envoys of the Weinstein company are phoning up members of the public and telling them to go and see Sicko.

- John Turturro has based his performance in Transformers on Michael Bay.

- Charles Hyer is directing the first Eloise film in a proposed series adapted from the beloved kids' books. This one will come from Eloise in Paris with Eloise Goes to Hollywood lined up as the first sequel.

- I'm sure I already told you that Laurence Fishburne is writing and will direct a movie of The Alchemist.

- Paul Giamatti and Emily Mortimer are set to star in Pretty Bird.

- Download the script for No Country For Old Men and marvel.

- Capone at AintItCool has interviewed Steve Zahn. I love Steve Zahn.

- IGN have penned an update on the progress of the JLA film. Personally, I think we'll see a Superman Returns sequel first - easier to cast, for one thing - but, well, nobody knows for certain.

- Paramount are sneaking in some screenings of Transformers next Monday, screenings that are seemingly entwined with an alleged attempt to cook the books.

- Disney are launching a Ratatouille wine.

- According to Jeffrey Wells, Russell Crowe is to star alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in Ridley Scott's Penetration.

- The DVD specs for Eaten Alive are out.

- Nintendo are expected to unveil WiiWare today - a shopping channel for original, downloadable games. Indie developers will be welcome.

- There are 11 Harry Potter 5 clips online now.

- Warners are to make a series of tween-centric direct-to-DVD films from the Clique books.

- For one day only: Palm Pictures will be streaming The Method online on June 29th. That's tomorrow, as I write. The film is, apparently, really rather good indeed.

- Richard LaGravanese and Hanif Kureishi have tied for the feature film award at the Humanitas awards this year.

Movie Minesweeper - The Wedding Day Edition

No, I'm not getting married today. But I am going to a wedding, and filming it too. So, I'm in a real rush - but I can't not update at all today, can I? No. So, here's a very rapid Movie Minesweeper to try and keep things relatively smoothly running.

- SuperHeroHype have the final Transformers one sheet. I was going to see the film today, but that wedding interfered. I'll survive.

- The first image of Harrison Ford in costume for the new Indiana Jones shows that his dress sense hasn't altered much.

- Morgan Freeman is to play Nelson Mandela. It was only a matter of time.

- Variety have published their 2007 list of hot screenwriters to watch. I spotted two that were, previously, actors on Buffy the Vampire Slayer but I wouldn't be surprised if you told me there were more.

- Sharon Morrill, the mastermind behind Disney's direct-to-DVD operations, has lost her job. Ostensibly, it's because of the delays and spiralling costs of Tinkerbell, but seeing as Tinkerbell seems to be the first of these projects to finally start going right, it's really because of everything else. She has done quite a bit of damage, if you ask me, and she really should have to carry the can.

- There's even more evidence that a Sex and the City movie is coming.

- A deliberately obscure and mysterious Saw IV still has turned up.

- Terence Stamp is now in Wanted too. I understand it's not a huge part (fans of the comic probably know which role I'm getting at).

- Only one witness to Cillian Murphy on the Dark Knight set? Hmmmm. I'm not saying the Scarecrow isn't in the film, just that this is no more proof of his appearance than all these dappy e-mails I've received are of Edward Nygma turning up. I'm shrugging at both, though, to be honest.

- Woody Allen and William Friedkin are to direct opera.

- Tonight, He Comes is being retitled John Hancock. Not sure about either of those. How about An Alan Smithee Movie 2?

- Apparently, James Marsters is to appear in the next series of Torchwood - presumably before knuckling down to write the script that will make him one of 2008's hot screenwriters.

- MTV have secured a much nicer version of the Where the Wild Things Are still.

- The Munchkins are getting a star on Hollywood's walk of fame. Just one star - to share. Is there some sort of height-to-star ratio that we don't know about? I'd get the man from the lollipop guild on the case, this simply can't be fair.

Movie Minesweeper - The Mini Minesweeper

I've just found out the UK press screening of Transformers coincides with a Wedding I not only have to attend, I have to 'film'. Very disappointing.

Here's a small-ish Minesweeper update to take my mind off of the disappointment.

- Michael Apted has signed on to direct Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Where were those Neil Burger rumours coming from? And where did they vanish to?

- Zac Efron's debut star vehicle is Seventeen, pitched as Big in reverse and written by Bringing Down the House's Jason Filardi. Which only reminds me how much I love Big and don't like Bringing Down the House at all. Interestingly, Efron is already making weak excuses for his non-involvement in Haunted High School Musical in the mini-interview. Why can't people just be honest about their real motivations?

- The Ridley Scott/Monopoly story has been bouncing around for at least nine days. I didn't buy it then, and I don't buy it now. Though I do know exactly how it could work and... actually, I've just cracked it. A great idea for a Monopoly movie. Hmmmm.... I'll probably have forgotten it by morning, but at least I won't be so cynical about the movie now. Probably.

- Melvil Poupaud is to play a race commentator in Speed Racer.

- SlashFilm has saved our memories and imaginations the bother by putting John Lennon and Yoko Ono alongside Dane Cook and Jessica Alba.

- Jim Broadbent has confirmed his Indy IV role - a Professor at Yale. Teeny cameo? I hope not.

- Talking of that Jones boy, MTV have the first look at Lego Indy. Tee and indeed hee.

- The AV Club have spoken to Joe Dante. Read it.

- The estate of Dr. Seuss have refused to sanction the name Sam I Am for Christina Applegate's new show. The replacement? Samanth Be Good. Better.

- Paul Reubens has a role in Todd Solondz' new film. That strikes me as a perfect combination.

- This all comes from Variety: Harvey Keitel, Willem Dafoe, Bruno Ganz and Valeria Golino (three and a half out of four is pretty grand) are to star in Theo Angelopoulos' Dust of Time. Meanwhile, Susan Nettlebeck has cast Gillian Anderson and Jeffrey Dean Morgan in Helen.

- Disney aren't the only US animation house forging alliances in India. Time Warner are also up to the same trick.

Movie Minesweeper - The Rich Tea Edition

- Variety have been chatting to the 3D boffins handling Beowulf.

- Sicko goes sci-fi with Repossession Mambo in which a man made of artifical organs has to go on the run after he fails to make payments for his heart transplant. Jude Law and Forest Whitaker are to star, while Miguel Sapochnik is to direct.

- John August is hooked on Tower Defense games.

- Remy the rat is energy efficient - even if the acres of renderbots that brought him to screen might not be.

- Both the IESB and Latino Review claim to have Voltron exclusives. In fact, they're each more or less recycling the same loose info about Justin Marks. Latino Review have more details, I suppose, but they're also much more excitable about the whole thing. Jeez. They really suck for this dumbed-down toy-movie dreck over there.

- Meanwhile, IESB also have casting details for the robot voices in Transformers.

Direct Download Link For New Transformers Commercial

Get a big look at a very vivid transformation now. Forget Michael Bay, forget the original Transformers toys and toons, the really attractive ingredient in this film are the CG shape-shifts. We can only imagine how awesome, and how tactile looking, a stop-motion animated version would have been but ILM are doing incredibly good work here.

Nobody Goes To The Transformers Junket In Korea

Speaking English, carrying a camera and being economical with the truth was all it took for one message board user to get himself into the Korean Transformers press junket. And with the same fractured grammar, let alone words, that litter forums, chatrooms and sms worldwide, they've told all.

Some pretty clear pictures of the big fakey Bumblebee, anyway.

Direct Download Link For That Transformers Tune Everybody's Talking About...

...except me.

Suit yourselves.

Movie Minesweeper - The Lucky Boy Edition

Remember how I was talking about Neil Gaiman's Death film last week? And I wished for a copy of the script? Well, I got my wish. I've just finished reading it. And while it percolates a little, I'm going to share another Movie Minesweeper links list with you, and then I'll write a review. For me at least, it's all very exciting.

Here are your links.

- Mark Millar has seen the Steve Ditko documentary produced, written and presented by Jonathan Ross. He's called it his favourite documentary ever.

- Howard Stern only last week turned down a brief voice role in the Transformers movie. Quite a fun casting idea, actually - think for a second and you'll know just which robot they wanted him for. His agent's advice on why he shouldn't take the role was seriously flawed. And now we'll probably be left with Opie. Or Anthony.

- Several signed Hostel 2 posters are being auctioned off for charity. I found the link at DreadCentral.

- Michael Bacall has been hired to write the fiction version of Seth Gordon's King of Kong. He's also writing the Scott Pilgrim script for Edgar Wright - or at least he was. Must like his retrogaming, that boy.

- Russell Crowe is to produce - but not appear - in Dolce's Inferno, a fairly standard seeming romantic comedy. According to Variety, "The contemporary romantic comedy concerns a hardnosed L.A. gossip columnist who falls in love and watches his world spin out of control".

- Daniel Craig dropped out of Blindness, now Mark Rufallo is stepping in.

- Variety have quoted Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith at the BAM screening of Son of Rambow. Jennings: All the technical, clever stuff, that is actually from the clever people I asked to do it. I have no idea how it works; Goldsmith: There's 1,400 people here tonight. Can you imagine if we got a bad response? Of course, they did not get a bad response. Son of Rambow is a great, great film - certainly the best I've seen so far this year.

- Eli Roth has a very, very, very big penis. But it's fake.

- The NY Times are weighing up the chances of four potential Sammy Davis Jr. biopics.

- Patrick Stewart is talking up his collaboration with John Logan on a modern-day Merchant of Venice.

- Nikki Finke (unknowingly?) pays tribute to Ray Dennis Steckler in a headline.

- A completely CG trailer for Kit Kittredge: An American Girl Mystery is already online. Download it now.

- A list of films and TV shows set to be hyped at Comic-Con this year has been unveiled. Beowulf, Hellboy 2, Stardust, Sweeney Todd, American Gangster, Where the Wild Things Are, Trick'r Treat and The Strangers are the film ick faves on show.

- Another behind the scene clip from The Golden Compass has shown up.

- Brian Helgeland is doing a rewrite of Nottingham.

- David Poland was appalled by Hostel 2 too.

- Working Title have optioned the documentary Young@Heart with the intent to turn it into a feature film. Basically, it's about a rock group composed of pensioners, something a bit like The Zimmers.

- The trailer for Triangle is online now. I found the link at Twitch.

Now, just a couple of more detailed posts and onto Death. So to speak.

Robots In This Guise

Tha trailer for Transmorphers is online now. Stop sniggering.

The only reason the film has that title is to ride the crest of somebody else's hard-worked-for and fairly-purchased hype. On the one hand it doesn't seem fair, on the other it just seems like cheeky, low-rent gusto.

When the robots appear in the trailer, its to mixed effect. There's a couple of well rendered shots - well rendered enough for the small screen at least - whereas some other bits and pieces don't look one half as good. The costumes are probably the single least satisfying component of the images however. Asbolutely none of the plot elements revealed show any imagination, however - here's hoping the full film isn't so pedestrian and predictable throughout.

Downloading and watching this trailer will probably have two effects:

a) make you appreciate the production values of the Transformers film all the more (Mitchell Amundsen, Jeff Mann, Deborah Lynn Scott and Dan Akers - to choose a few examples - end up looking like unparalelled geniuses).

b) make you wish these low-budget exploitation films were a little more ambitious, daring, witty.

I'd go over to Asylum and plot, script and direct a straight to DVD title for them in the blink of an eye - there's no reason to not take such a job as seriously as any other, of course. And no reason the next Asylum film couldn't be the greatest film ever made - commercial value and quality are in no way exclsuive. And if you make your budget your aesthetic, you'll be okay on an Asylum-sized spend too.

I'd love to see some of these bottom-shelf titles start punching a little harder.

Direct Download Links For Five New Transformers Clips

Download clip one, two, three, four or five right now. The clips are hosted by the advertising site for the GM tie-in cars.

I've Lost Count Of The Transformers Clips, Trailers And TV Spots

Have I given you direct download links to the new Transformers trailer yet? If not, here they are - in low, medium and high resolution. They're all starting to look more or less the same.

How about the fifth TV spot? I've got a nice copy here and am looking for somewhere good to host it. And I don't mean YouTube.

In the meantime, it is available from FileFactory. If you can offer a more user-friendly, preferably directly-linkable home for the clip, please let me know.

Direct Download Link For New Transformers TV Spot

Robots, largely not in disguise. Download them.

Want To See Transformers Early?

Michael Bay has launched a campaign to get Transformers released on July 3rd, not 4th. Or that's what he claims is going on. I'll go out on a limb and guess that the decision has already been made and this is a little trick, a piece of internet sleight of hand, to convince the geek masses that their opinion counts for something.

Haven't plane bound snakes, death proofed cars, slithering aliens and embittered space cowboys in natty brown coats pretty much proven that it doesn't already?

Direct Download Link For The Dutch Transformers Trailer With New Footage

You can download the Dutch Transformers trailer now, should you so wish. It is in FLV format,
but if you're a trailer hound and haven't downloaded an FLV player already...

Direct Download Links For New Transformers Trailer

The latest Transformers trailer is available for download in 1080p, 720p and 480p hi-def Quicktime. Rename it something.mov if you want it to work.

Movie Minesweeper - The I've Missed You Too Edition

Not much activity on film ick over the last 24 hours or so, but I want to put that straight... over the next 24 minutes or so. Martin's currently prepping his review of the Burn After Reading script, by Ethan and Joel Coen. To keep you going until then, here's a heap of links you might want to bother with.

- Lindsay Lohan will apparently play a stripper in I Know Who Killed Me. I suppose this news has set the web alight as people are assuming she'll go naked on screen. I don't assume this, personally - for one thing, I saw Closer. Besides, there's not much of Lohan left to see, there's not really any air of mystery.

- There are to be up to three more Terminator films, apparently built out of seemingly incidental details hidden in Terminator 3. We'll see.

- Eli Roth is planning an entire film of fake trailers, to be called Trailer Trash - to be shot before and after Cell. Not all of them will be directed by Roth. He discusses this in a video interview with Collider.

- Orlando Bloom and Scarlett Johansson are rumoured to be in talks for Roman Polanski's Pompeii.

- Michael Bay has responded to Bruce Willis' disses - and either Bay is lying again, as per the Transformers lips, or he's just rumbled Bruno something rotten. According to Bay he was originally approached to direct Die Hard 4.0.

- Michel Gondry is directing Bjork's Declare Independence video, due for a July release.

- John De Mol is to revive the Hammer brand name.

- Peter Cattaneo is to direct The Rocker, with Rainn Wilson lined up to star as "a failed drummer given a second shot at fame".

- Gena Holden is the new Dale Arden.

Gemini Man

I really rather hated the Wolverine script by David Benioff, possibly rewritten by David Ayer. If I was sure, absolutely, that the blame was all Benioff's, that Ayer wasn't accountable, even the cautious interest I had in Gemini Man would evaporate. All the same, Benioff was at least partly responsible and his other scripts - particularly for Troy - have left me shaking my head...

As announced today, Benioff is doing a page-one write-over on Gemini Man for Walt Disney. Don Murphy, Chad Oman and Mike Stenson will executive produce, Jerry Bruckheimer will produce. Obvious choice Michael Bay is probably going to be busy with Prince of Persia and a second Transformers, so I've no idea who they'll rope in to direct this one.

The film's premise isn't a bad one at all: a once-great hitman comes face to face with his younger, fitter clone. Sage wisdom and 20/20 hindsight are bound to afford him the winning edge, wouldn't you expect? I see a better resolution - one as resonant as the basic premise, I think - but I'll be dashed on the rocks before I post it here.