Dear Santa,

For Christmas, I would like a yellow Camaro with black racing stripes that can drive itself. Also, if it can transform into a giant robot that will risk its life for me, that’d be pretty sweet.

XOXO,
Natalie

P.S. – A wide-angle lens would be pretty stellar too.

So I just saw the first showing of the new Transformers movie. It was…better than I had expected. If you can count on Michael Bay for anything, it’s to make explosions and shit falling from the sky/buildings/whatever look good.

I think I liked it better than the original animated movie, or at least the parts that I managed to stay awake for when I watched it over the weekend. Transformers was never my favorite cartoon as a child (top three: Thundercats, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Rainbow Brite), but it wasn’t until I watched the movie again that I realized how much it was just a vehicle for a) cool animation; and b) selling toys. I couldn’t really discern a plot in the original movie.

The live-action movie has a plot and, of course, some romance. There are cheesy bits, for sure – parts where I could barely restrain myself from leaning over Erin to whisper “You’ve got the power/you’re got the touch” in Brian’s ear. But there were genuinely funny moments as well, and, surprisingly enough, real emotional connections to the characters. And not just the humans – Bumblebee was probably the coolest character in the movie. Well, the Aussie NSA chick was cool too.

But boomboxes…those are just plain evil. I was kind of surprised they didn’t turn him into an iPod or something. Kids today are probably like, “WTF is that thing?” whereas any rational character in the movie, upon seeing a boombox on Air Force 1, would probably have jettisoned the thing right then and there. Hunk ‘o junk.