Tag Archives: Michael Bay

It’s A Shame About Rey

I owe you good folks an apology, I really do. This is gonna take some serious swallowing of pride, but I have to admit where I was mistaken. Here goes nothing.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Don't Know Don't Care, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, O'Shloktoberfest, Robot Toy Fetish, Thousand Listen Club, Worst Of All

All I Want For Christmas Is The Old You Back

What is a cartoonist?

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Don't Know Don't Care, Nostalgic Obsessions, Podcastery, Site Stuff

King’s X

You want ’90s? I’ll give you motherfuckers ’90s!

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Saturday Movie Matinee

Five Alive

Alright I did another one, alright?! I’m so damn committed to this idea I squeaked out another one!!!

Click the cover to visit the ordering page!

Now I know how Michael Bay felt after wrapping Transformers 5. Like me, he probably leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, and sighed “holy shit, now I’ve done that five times.”

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Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Magazine Rack, Site Stuff

Matty Watches Transformers: The Last Knight

As an “underground” artist, I go broke often. Sometimes I have to sacrifice comfort or nourishment to pay my rent.

Sometimes, I’m broke because I’m a total assclown who takes public transportation across town to see a $22 popcorn movie, alone. (I didn’t have enough for actual popcorn.)

Even while facing the consequences, I have no regrets.

I don’t know what the hell Al Gore had to do with the history of Transformers, and I don’t want to know. I had to sit through the trailer for his second bullshit global-warming scare film, and he can go fuck himself with an iceberg.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Saturday Movie Matinee, Unfairly Maligned

The Commoditization of Emotional Discovery

Feel like crying?

There’s an entire genre of movies, TV shows and music, explicitly designed to mollify you in your time of emotional distress. Plus, there’s a contrived ending that tells you everything’s okay. Or not. It’s basically sadness porn, after all.

Feel like laughing? Same deal. Entire blocks of television programming are devoted to laughter, loaded with disparate commercials for unhealthy items and services. You can “binge-watch” every stand-up special a comedian has produced, and then argue about a decrease in their edge, on the Internet. Isn’t that fantastic?

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Filed under Don't Know Don't Care, Eatable Things, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Uncategorized, Worst Of All

Gridbug Chasers

In the 1982 science-fiction fantasy TRON, there comes a moment inside the computer world where the protagonists are imperiled by “gridbugs”.

gridbug1

Clearly a threat.

The danger is underlined by dialogue spoken by Cindy Morgan, as the shapely input/output program Yori:

“This isn’t going to be easy. If those gridbugs get us, we’ve had it.”

The gridbugs in question get a ten-second interlude, complete with a unique and rather corny soundtrack cue, and then go on to never affect anything or even be mentioned in passing again. Continue reading

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Filed under Animation Analysis, Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Saturday Movie Matinee, Unfairly Maligned, Worst Of All

Animation Analysis: The Transformers: The Movie

For the past ten years, one Rhode Island company has made me so deliriously happy, I’ve considered corporate personhood, so I could ask for its hand in marriage.

Hasbro.

They even threw in a rubsign. Hasbro is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

They even threw in a rubsign. Hasbro is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

2006 was the year this little toy company had a subline of their Transformers toys called “Classics”; new figures of favorite characters from the 1984 cartoon. And a funny thing happened- these robots from an old show sold very, very well. Characters like “Bumblebee”, “Megatron” and “Optimus Prime” were familiar to a enviously broad range of people. They had staying power equal to Superman or Batman. The world was on the cusp of finding this out.   Continue reading

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Filed under Animation Analysis, Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Saturday Movie Matinee, Thousand Listen Club, Unfairly Maligned

What Bay Got Right

(This article originally appeared in a less edited form on Mike The Pod, 7/11/11. Please note that since then, there has been a fourth Transformers, which grossed over a billion dollars, and there’s a fifth on the way in 2017. There is a schedule of yearly releases stretching a decade into the future, the same as Marvel, and Disney’s Star Wars.)

SPOILERS covers all three movies in the Michael Bay Transformers trilogy (until it becomes a quadrilogy, or quintology, which I wouldn’t complain about).

If this article becomes too insular for you, dear reader, may I heartily recommend you to tfwiki.com. Mostly because I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to link every whatsit on this page. If you’re a repeat visitor that doesn’t like it when I go off about robots, this is going to make you hate my guts. Continue reading

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Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Saturday Movie Matinee, Unfairly Maligned

Bouillon Cube Theory

Almost every single aspect of my personality can be explained by one simple fact: when I was a kid I ate a bouillon cube.

bouillonI was too young to know better. I had witnessed the flavor sorcery that resulted when my parents would cook with a bouillon cube. Surely, I reasoned, if it made dinner taste that good, then a whole cube of it would be a trip to flavor heaven.  I even imagined it might expand into a steak or a burger, like in The Jetsons. So one evening I sneaked into the kitchen, unwrapped a beef cube, popped it in my mouth, and chewed it up. Continue reading

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