Two Ger­man dubbed clips have sur­faced online, trans­la­tions are wel­comed. The first of these fea­tures Wheelie sneak­ing about, before being caught on a mouse trap and alert­ing Mikaela’s atten­tion who comes to deal with him. Thanks Randy.

The sec­ond shows footage prior to Scavenger’s trans­for­ma­tion, once again in Ger­man — heli­copter flight in to Beth­le­hem Steel, sol­diers prepar­ing for bat­tle, before the robot emerges and the action commences.

First up, some more footage from the Trans­form­ers 2 world pre­mière in Tokyo, thanks to Marc via Para­mount Pic­tures. These pre­views have been very nicely edited together:

This sec­ond video shows us clips from the press con­fer­ence and the prepa­ra­tion work for the première:

Next up, the Trans­form­ers 2 cast were in Seoul, South Korea for the next première.

Revenge of the Fallen delays Harry Pot­ter IMAX run

The Harry Pot­ter 6 IMAX release will be delayed by two weeks to July 29th in light of Trans­form­ers 2’s IMAX run. Harry Pot­ter and the Half Blood Prince will be released on July 15th. This is a result of Warner Bros. chang­ing HP6 from a Christ­mas to a Sum­mer movie, over­look­ing the four week Trans­form­ers lock in.

Aprilia RSV 1000 R debut

An Aprilia motor­cy­cle, dressed in Trans­form­ers gear, and one that matches the one that Mikaela (Megan Fox) rides, has debuted at Road Amer­ica. Thanks Kim.

GMC Top­kick discontinued

Gen­eral Motors are report­edly stop­ping pro­duc­tion of the GMC Top­kick model, aka our friend Ironhide.

Michael Bay as an M&M

Michael Bay has been car­i­ca­tured as an M&M against a back drop of Prime fight­ing The Fallen. There is a great like­ness here, though I’m not sure why a fem­i­nine pur­ple M&M was chosen.

UK Trans­form­ers 2 contests

Para­mount Pic­tures in the UK are offer­ing up goodie bags, copies of the score and sound­track and more excit­ingly, tick­ets to the pre­mière on June 15th. View con­tests

Revenge of the Fallen score cover

The cover for the score has been revealed, noth­ing too rad­i­cal, a closeup shot of Opti­mus Prime. Pur­chase the score from Amazon

Mak­ing of ‘New Divide’ video

How many videos about a song can you make? Here’s another Linkin Park mak­ing of video, New Divide fea­tures in Trans­form­ers 2.

The world pre­mière of Trans­form­ers 2 aired last night in Tokyo! We’ve got the pic­tures, video and most impor­tantly — movie reports to best describe the event for all those that couldn’t attend.

Reports

The first report comes via the Don Mur­phy forums — obvi­ously LOTS of spoil­ers herein!

Ok guys just got back! Don’t have much time to post, don’t wanna miss the train but here’s some quick stuff.

Movie was incred­i­ble, I liked it much more than the first! More action, more robots, less humans! Though there are some lame sex­ual innu­en­dos like Wheelie hump­ing Megan’s leg.

Any­way, Bay and the actors came right into the the­ater and intro­duced the film. I was tempted to scream “Don Mur­phy Stooges #1″ but I didn’t want to get led out by security!

The VA thing in the cred­its was way too fast, sorry guys. The Fallen was Todd some­thing. Welker does voice Sound­wave, and Dev­as­ta­tor too. Dev­as­ta­tor has one line, scream­ing his name. Sound­wave only has a few lines but he speaks Eng­lish. But he never comes down to earth and never turns into a robot. Bleah. Very lit­tle screen time, but at least he doesn’t get exploded which leaves things open for the third movie.

Mostly Eng­lish, not much cybertronian.

The Twins were lame. As in the “bust a cap in you ass” stereo­type. I could’ve done with­out them.

Jet­fire was comic relief. He has a British accent and reminded me of a Monty Python char­ac­ter. He doesn’t “com­bine” with Prime in the nor­mal sense, he gets fatally wounded and rips out his spark, killing him­self so Prime can use his parts.

Wheelie is noth­ing like G1 Wheelie. He kinda reminds me of Rattrap.

Lots of kitchen bots. One was a Samu­rai too. Bludgeon?

Only named Con­struc­ti­con is Ram­page, and he is red.

Mega­tron is revived by some Con­struc­ti­cons and “The Doctor.”

Side­ways never trans­forms, he is cut in half by Side­swipe in the first bat­tle scene in car mode. Side­swipe is cool. Rav­age is cool too.

There was a bot that looked like Black­out but he was not named. Black­out him­self was never revived so I can’t say it was him. He did not speak and was not named in the cred­its. In fact in the last bat­tle scene there were tons of, well, “repaints,” basi­cally reused ani­ma­tion. So even after Dev­as­ta­tor forms, there are still con­struc­ti­cons run­ning around. And some Proto­forms. I even saw a truck that looked like Bonecrusher…though I never saw him in robot mode. Scor­ponok is in the final bat­tle too and is killed by Jet­fire in about 2 seconds.

There are three motor­cy­cles, but they appear to be named col­lec­tively Arcee. Not much screen time/lines for them anyway.

The term “Matrix of Lead­er­ship” is used, it’s a key that oper­ates a device to draw energy from the sun.

Ok that’s enough for now, not gonna check this board again till tomor­row! I sup­pose this thread will be about 100 pages long by then so I’m sorry if I can’t answer everything.

Thanks again Night­bird for the tix!

Whilst Sora at the Michael Bay forums says,

I loved Trans­form­ers 1 so much, but I’m sure you’ll feel like the pre­vi­ous movie was just a dash of bit­ters in a glass of appe­tizer Mar­tini. Be pre­pared to be impressed!

Video of stars arriving

The stars arriv­ing and sign­ing for fans, as well as the pho­to­shoot and Bumblebee

Read the rest of this entry »

From the words of Michael Bay:

Hey every­one,

In Japan today. After a month and half seven days a week most days going till mid­night me and my crew have just about fin­ished Trans­form­ers. I have never seen such a level of ded­i­ca­tion from every crew mem­ber in a movie before.

Even today after the press in Japan and right before the pre­mière tonight, I have to sneak out to a dig­i­tal house to approve the last few effect shots.

It has been a long hard road, but really fun one to travel. What you will notice that is strik­ingly dif­fer­ent than Trans­form­ers 1, is the level of ani­ma­tion detail. The robot char­ac­ters (42 in all), you really can feel empa­thy for them. What is also very dif­fer­ent is the sheer scale of the movie. We have been very tight hold­ing back much of the best imagery in com­mer­cials and trailers.

The way to see this movie is on IMAX. Never before has there been 4k ren­dered char­ac­ter ani­ma­tion shot on full IMAX 70 mm film. This is a first and the results are stun­ning. You will see Opti­mus Prime in a few shots where he is actu­ally per­fectly to scale on the IMAX 50 foot tall screens.

For IMAX, I cre­ated a slightly longer cut with more robot fight­ing. Four scenes were shot on IMAX cam­eras so the screen will fill the full IMAX screen for these scenes.

Haters beware.

Michael

Lots of small Revenge of the Fallen press arti­cles and news bits are com­ing out every day now as we ramp up for the movies release. Time for a summary.

TF2 cut complete

This Fri­day actors viewed the fruits of their efforts, as reports Tyrese on his twit­ter:

What is gonna be the best part of your Fri­day?? I’m gonna go first. Today @3pm me ; the cast are gonna see the final cut of Trans­former 2!!

Chevy Camaro commercial

GM have started air­ing a new Chevy Camaro com­meri­cial that fea­tures Bum­ble­bee and a slither of new footage.

Toy news

New Blaze Mas­ter pic­tures (view gallery)
Deluxe Jolt pic­tures (view gallery)
Deluxe Stalker Scor­ponok pic­tures (view gallery)
Power Bots Side­swipe (view gallery)

Twins Ice Cream Truck Toy

The first pic­tures of this toy in the wild:

Michael Bay talks to Forbes

Bay has been talk­ing money with Forbes — inter­est­ing facts from the inter­view; Bay takes approx­i­mately 8% of prof­its from toys based on the movies. As a pro­ducer Bay brings in an aver­age 8% of a film’s net earn­ings. Bay also made a whop­ping $40m from the atro­cious Pearl Har­bor movie.

Trans­form­ers 2 contests

The Van­cou­ver Province news­pa­per are offer­ing two passes to a Revenge of the Fallen screen­ing two days prior to release, posters and video games for run­ners up. View con­test

Total Assault are giv­ing away a Linkin Park and Trans­form­ers 2 themed gui­tar. View con­test (Thanks Deanna!)

More video game footage from E3

New Divide Mak­ing of

Shia & TF2 secrets

Talk­ing with Yahoo movies, about injuries on and off set:

“He hurts his hand in the mid­dle of a human trans­fer,” LaBeouf explains cryp­ti­cally. “Sorry this is so mys­te­ri­ous. There’s just cer­tain words I can’t say.”

“Revenge of the Fallen” begins with LaBeouf’s char­ac­ter, Sam Witwicky, head­ing off to col­lege to dis­tance him­self from his shape-shifting robot friends. Sam’s beloved Camaro, which trans­forms into Bum­ble­bee, sits in the garage “sort of like his (parole offi­cer), his guardian,” LaBeouf said dur­ing a recent interview.

While at school, Sam starts see­ing sym­bols through “epilep­tic seizure-type fits of infor­ma­tion trans­fer,” LaBeouf said. “He just becomes a fac­tual vol­cano.” The sym­bols form a map to an energy source the robots need to con­trol sen­tient beings, LaBeouf said.

The actor becomes vis­i­bly excited when talk­ing about “Trans­form­ers,” his slight frame buzzing in a button-down shirt and skinny black tie. His left hand is wrapped in gauze, with a splint prop­ping up one fin­ger. “It’s like 11 days out of surgery,” he said, refer­ring to a pro­ce­dure to remove screws that sta­bi­lized his dig­its after the acci­dent. “It’s not bro­ken, but it’s newly not-broken,” LaBeouf said.

“There’s far more stunts this time,” he said. “Aside from the fact that I was mak­ing the whole movie with a bro­ken hand, my knee has stitches, my eye had stitches, my back was gouged.”

Dur­ing one scene, LaBeouf said he “lit­er­ally stabbed myself in the eye” and had to be treated at a mil­i­tary hos­pi­tal. Though credit may be due for tough­ness, it’s LaBeouf’s nat­ural warmth that makes him per­fect to play Sam, the film’s screen­writ­ers say.

Slightly ear­lier than expected, pre-order tick­ets for Revenge of the Fallen are now avail­able across the US. Esti­mated run­ning time is cur­rently some­where between 142 mins and 151 mins accord­ing to tick­et­ing sites. Tick­ets are also on sale at UK IMAX cin­e­mas, although these begin from June 26th, with a 3:20am show­ing — strange con­sid­er­ing the expected 19th June release date.

Buy tick­ets via Fandango

Tick­ets are also avail­able from Movi­eT­ick­ets and Movie­Fone.

Some the­aters that claim to be an IMAX do not give you the full IMAX expe­ri­ence, with this in mind Slash­Film have linked to a handy map show­ing the near­est true IMAX the­ater: Google Maps IMAX theaters

A green marker indi­cates a “real” IMAX screen, mean­ing a screen that is totally immer­sive and fills your field of vision. A red excla­ma­tion mark indi­cates a “fake” IMAX screen, mean­ing a screen that is branded “IMAX” the same as giant screens, but is not that much larger than reg­u­lar movie screens, and does not fill your field of vision. OMNIMAX or “domed” screens are indi­cated by a pur­ple orb shape.

Read the rest of this entry »

Lots of small news items com­ing out at the moment, didn’t seem worth giv­ing each of them their own post. Here goes:

Movie com­pleted this week

Michael Bay has com­mented that he hopes to have pro­duc­tion of Trans­form­ers Revenge of the Fallen com­pleted by the end of Wednesday:

“I’m a lit­tle stressed because I’m fin­ish­ing the movie tomor­row. Maybe Wednesday.”

That’s only 5 days before the world pre­mière in Tokyo!

ET exclu­sive TF2 footage today

ET will be air­ing some exclu­sive new footage from the movie some time today, as well as an inter­view with Megan Fox and Shia.

Box Office Track­ing — $175m 5-day opener?

From Nikki Finke:

[…] Rival stu­dios are telling me they expect Trans­form­ers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen to open with a high of $175M for its 5-day open­ing from Wednes­day, June 24 to Sun­day, June 28. Because the sequel came onto track­ing HUGE today. Para­mount will try to lower expec­ta­tions. But here’s what can’t be argued: Spider-Man 2 opened on Wednes­day, June 30, 2004, and did $152 mil­lion for its first 5 days. So Trans­form­ers 2 feels like at least it should be in the $160+M range.

IMAX tick­ets on sale in Australia

The IMAX in Syd­ney has put up its pre-orders for TF2, which can now be pur­chased. The first show­ing is at 12:01am. Buy tick­ets.

Wednes­day, Jun 24, 2009 — IMAX Syd­ney.
12:01AM (MIDNIGHT) 3:00PM 6:00PM 9:00PM
Thurs­day, Jun 25, 2009 — IMAX Syd­ney.
3:00PM 6:00PM 9:00PM
Fri­day, Jun 26, 2009 — IMAX Syd­ney.
3:00PM 6:00PM 9:00PM 11:59PM
Sat­ur­day, Jun 27, 2009 — IMAX Syd­ney.
12:00PM 3:00PM 6:00PM 9:00PM 11:59PM
Sun­day, Jun 28, 2009 — IMAX Syd­ney.
12:00PM 3:00PM 6:00PM 9:00PM
Mon­day, Jun 29, 2009 — IMAX Syd­ney.
3:00PM 6:00PM 9:00PM
Tues­day, Jun 30, 2009 — IMAX Syd­ney.
3:00PM 6:00PM 9:00PM
Wednes­day, Jul 1, 2009 — IMAX Syd­ney.
3:00PM 6:00PM 9:00PM

Famous mag­a­zine inter­view Shia

via Cine­plex:

“Mike has been bet­ter this time, he’s more com­fort­able and he’s doing dif­fer­ent stuff,” says LaBeouf, look­ing buff but for the cast on his bro­ken hand, dur­ing an inter­view in Los Ange­les last autumn. “It’s wild to watch Mike grow up and to acknowl­edge it. Every film­maker, every movie out, some­thing changes. You either gain some­thing or you lose some­thing, and I think this time Mike has gained a lot. I also think work­ing with Steven is really trans­form­ing Mike. His prepa­ra­tion is very dif­fer­ent on this one than it was on the first one.”

[Regard­ing request for Megan to gain some weight] “Megan Fox is gor­geous, still,” LaBeouf gal­lantly affirms. “And no, I didn’t think she was too skinny when she came back to do this. Megan has never looked bad. There’s always some­thing that Michael says, but he’s been good.”

“It’s big­ger, faster and stronger than what we did the first time,” he says. “We’re blow­ing every­thing up. I was just at Hol­lo­man Air Force Base, where we blew up an entire town! There are new char­ac­ters that are inter­est­ing. Our ban­ter is fast and it’s fun, it’s table tennis.”

“There’s cool stuff that hap­pens to Sam. Sam starts to lose his mind. He starts hav­ing visions of his grand­fa­ther, Archibald Witwicky, and that’s fun to play around with. And recess time with John Tur­turro [who plays the addled fed con­stantly at odds with Sam] is always fun…. It’s like Groundlings The­ater,” LaBeouf says, ref­er­enc­ing the L.A. com­edy troupe whose alumni include Will Fer­rell and Lisa Kudrow. “You’re ad lib­bing all day long. One of the beau­ti­ful things about Mike is that he’ll allow it. You can do free-form thought the whole day.”