LAST MONTH, I went to the Frank & Son Collectible Show in the City of Industry, Calif., to see up-close a couple of famous cars featured in past movies and TV shows. Among the vehicles on display were the DeLorean from Back to the Future, the Camaro used for Bumblebee in Transformers, KITT from the classic TV series Knight Rider and even the Batmobile from the 1960s Batman TV show. Also shown was a van customized to look like Ratchet from the Transformers cartoon series in the 1980s.

LINK: Additional photos I took at the Frank & Son Collectible Show



I had to contribute a small monetary donation (which would be used to buy gas to transport these vehicles around) so I could enter the exhibit hall where these automobiles were shown. It’s all good. All I can say is, hopefully they’ll have the Tumbler from Batman Begins and The Dark Knight on display next time. That is all.

OTHER IMAGES OF THE DAY... Meet Bane, the back-breaking main villain played by Inception's Tom Hardy in The Dark Knight Rises...which officially began filming two weeks ago. Looks like Bane will look just as menacing as Heath Ledger's Joker did in The Dark Knight, though it's still too bad that Azrael won't be in Christopher Nolan's third Bat flick. Oh well. Now show us an official pic of Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle/Catwoman!

MORE IMAGES OF THE DAY... Below are screenshots from the 3-D trailer of Transformers: Dark of the Moon that is now playing in front of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides at theaters nationwide. The image above is of Megatron...who sports a new look in TF3. You can view the 3-D trailer (which isn't in 3-D here) at the end of this journal entry.

FAST FIVE... I saw the Justin Lin-directed action flick last Sunday, and compared to the previous Fast and the Furious films I saw (the first one in 2001, and Fast and Furious in 2009), this one was awesome! Of course, my opinion may be tainted by the fact the movie has a surprising 78% Fresh rating on RottenTomatoes.com, but Fast Five truly had a lot of cool action sequences in it. From the opening rescue scene of Vin Diesel (which was a continuation of the final scene in Fast and Furious), to Paul Walker and Jordana Brewser trying to steal cars from a moving train in Brazil, to the ridiculous but entertaining climax where Paul Walker and Vin Diesel evade scores of police cars while literally towing a giant money vault along the streets of Rio de Janeiro, Fast Five definitely delivered as one of the first blockbuster films of the 2011 summer movie season. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was a bad-ass as DSS (Diplomatic Security Service) agent Hobbs...and if you stayed to watch the end credits, you’ll know that he (as well as Eva Mendes) will have a considerable role in the next Fast and the Furious flick. I wouldn’t have said this two weeks earlier, but I’ll totally watch Fast and the Furious 6 whenever it comes out.



FYI, what makes watching Fast Five last Sunday especially noteworthy is the fact I just arrived home from the theater when I found out that Osama bin Laden was eliminated (one of my brothers told me as I was walking into the garage since I usually park my car out on the street). Other people ask "Where were you on 9/11?" (I was at home... I didn’t have college classes that day)... This is what I was doing on the evening the world’s most wanted terrorist was taken out by U.S. Navy SEALs. Carry on.

JUST THOUGHT I’d share this awesome new poster for Transformers: Dark of the Moon below. I could talk about last night's very good episode of The Office that was the final one for Steve Carrell (who's focusing on doing more movies) and his bumbling but hilarious character Michael Scott (who's heading to Colorado to spend more time with his fiancée, Holly), but you can read about it elsewhere online. The TF3 poster is courtesy of Yahoo! Movies. Very nice.

TRANSFORMERS 3 Update... The newest trailer for Dark of the Moon hit the Web today, and as per tradition if you regularly visit my Blog, here are a collage of screenshots I got from the preview. Since my computer is pretty old (how old is it? I bought it a month after I graduated from college...which was in the same year Spider-Man 2 was released in theaters. Why am I telling you this?), and every Quicktime video on Apple.com is now in High Definition (which my computer can't handle unless I buy more RAM and a better video graphics card for it), I had to get the screencaptures from a Youtube version of the trailer (that I linked to below)—which is of lower quality than that of a Quicktime clip. Oh well.



If you want to see the TF3 trailer on the big screen, watch it in front of Fast Five when it comes out in theaters tomorrow. I might watch the fifth Fast and the Furious film this weekend. Might.

IMAGES OF THE DAY... Just thought I’d share these nine pictures from Transformers: Dark of the Moon, whose theatrical trailer will be shown in front of the next Fast and the Furious film, Fast Five, in theaters this Friday (and premiering online a day before, at 4 PM Pacific Time on Thursday). A bit of awesome news that was revealed lately is that Leonard Nimoy—who originally was in retirement from acting following his brief stint on the cool FOX TV show, Fringe—will do the voice of Autobot newcomer Sentinel Prime (shown below these three awesome illustrations of Shockwave, Optimus Prime and Bumblebee). Below the four kick-ass images of Sentinel Prime is another just-released photo of Shia LaBeouf and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley...in a scene from TF3's climactic battle sequence in Chicago. I remember back in the days when it was Megan Fox looking hot and concerned standing behind Sam Witwicky. Rosie totally makes up for that. One last bit of TF3 news is that the Linkin Park song which will be featured in Dark of the Moon is called "Iridescent". Cool song— You can listen to it here. Carry on.

SUCKER PUNCH... I saw the Zack Snyder-directed film earlier today, and much like his previous films Watchmen and 300, it was visually stunning. Plus, it had a pretty cool soundtrack. The most interesting aspect of Sucker Punch is that all the fantasy scenes in the movie involving the main character Baby Doll (played by Emily Browning...who I remember from 2004’s Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, which starred Jim Carrey) took place while she was burlesque-dancing (which we never see on-screen) for different clients at the mental asylum she was held in. Who would’ve thought it was possible to gyrate and titillate while simultaneously picture oneself fighting against a 30-foot-tall Samurai welding a Gatling gun? Hm.



I also saw the sci-fi adventure comedy Paul. It was funny... If I had the funds I’d totally go to Nevada and visit the "Extraterrestrial Highway" that leads to Area 51, just like what Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s characters did. Seth Rogen was amusing voicing the alien, while it was interesting to see Jason Bateman and Jeffrey Tambor (who both appeared in the long-defunct but very hilarious FOX TV series Arrested Development) show up in the film...along with Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio (who, along with Rogen, both showed up in 2007’s smash hit Superbad. Greg Mottola, who helmed Superbad, also directed Paul). Nice um, cameo by Steven Spielberg in the movie... I’m looking forward to watching the upcoming J.J. Abrams-directed film Super 8—which is produced by Spielberg. The film comes out in theaters on June 10. So, yea. You know what I’m gonna say next: That is all.

BATTLE: LOS ANGELES... I finally saw the alien-invasion film today, and needless to say, it was the sci-fi version of Black Hawk Down. Which means...I thought it was pretty cool! Non-stop action was waged throughout B:LA, much like in Ridley Scott’s 2002 war flick about the 1993 conflict in Somalia. Aaron Eckhart was awesome as Staff Sergeant Nantz; while compared to her gung-ho attitude in Avatar, Machete and the Fast and the Furious films, Michelle Rodriguez was somewhat tame as Tech Sgt. Elena Santos in B:LA. As Santos, Rodriguez didn't have the usual sarcastic quips that she had playing previous movie characters. Not that that's a bad thing. Nothing exceptionally noteworthy about the civilians played by Bridget Moynahan and Michael Peña, but I’ll give them props since my review about this flick is supposed to be a positive one. I just found out through IMDb.com that 2nd Lt. William Martinez, who was in charge of the Marine platoon before handing command over to Eckhart's Nantz and then sacrificing himself later in the film, was played by Ramon Rodriguez. In case you’re wondering who this is, Rodriguez played the wacky college roommate of Shia LaBeouf in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. But back to B:LA.



Battle: Los Angeles didn’t exactly have a deep message like 2009’s District 9 (which B:LA also borrowed elements from...namely weapons that cause explosions surrounded by bolts of lightning) did, but it was still a lot better than last year’s Skyline. B:LA didn’t have a "WTF??" moment at the very end of the movie like Skyline did...though as I said at the beginning of this journal entry, B:LA was obviously inspired by Black Hawk Down in that Eckhart and Co. go back into the battlefield at the film's conclusion to take care of unfinished business. Also, the battle in Los Angeles lasted for one day...while the 1993 battle in Mogadishu, Somalia lasted a day as well. Nothing wrong with that. My personal gripe about B:LA is that, like the Bourne movies (as in The Bourne Identity, Supremacy and Ultimatum), it overdid it with the shaky cam. By now using this camera technique in war films has become a cliché, and unfortunately B:LA suffers from this tired method. It was cool in Saving Private Ryan, Gladiator and Black Hawk Down...but try spending more time setting the camera up on a tripod or at least a Steadicam, folks—if there’s a sequel (Battle: San Diego, anyone?). Thanks. Another gripe is that the trippy song used in B:LA's theatrical trailers, "The Sun’s Gone Dim and the Sky Turned Black" by Icelandic musician Johann Johannsson, wasn't featured in the movie. Oh well.



Special effects-wise, the aliens in B:LA looked interesting...though were they using projectile weapons (RE: bullets) just like the humans were? I guess having the invaders shoot laser beams at the Marines would’ve ruined the gritty, realistic tone of the film. After all, this ain’t Star Wars. Or Star Trek. Or Independence Day. Or Transformers. Or Terminator. The same people who did the visual FX on Skyline also did the FX work on B:LA. The FX work was what saved Skyline since its CW Network-quality cast of actors wasn’t exactly the saving grace of that movie. That is all.

IMAGES OF THE DAY... Meet Sentinel Prime—Optimus Prime’s big brother in this July's Transformers: Dark of the Moon. The two Autobots will be featured on the cover of this April's issue of Empire magazine...out in newsstands soon. In case you’re wondering, Sentinel’s vehicle mode of choice in Dark of the Moon will be the cool fire truck below. That is all.