Another round up of the inter­views, press arti­cles and what­not that keep­ing pop­ping up here there and everywhere.

Michael Bay’s Film Weekly Podcast

This inter­view comes from The Guardian’s “Film weekly” inter­view with Michael Bay and was posted to the offi­cial Michael Bay site.

Bay is not quit­ting Transformers

Some inter­views recently spun the “I’m tak­ing a break” stance Michael Bay has on Trans­form­ers 3 to give the impres­sion he was quit­ting the fran­chise alto­gether. This is not the case and in all like­li­hoods Michael Bay shall direct Trans­form­ers 3, due for release in 2012.

GM pro­vided 67 vehi­cles for Trans­form­ers 2

USA Today have a short arti­cle on the Transformers/GM rela­tion­ship and an inter­view with Michael Bay.

“They were respon­si­ble for build­ing the cars, and I was try­ing to get my check because we built the cars, fronted them the money, and they were late on pay­ing us,” Bay says. “I was like, ‘We bet­ter get our check fast before they go bankrupt.’

Chevy won’t reveal what it cost to pro­vide cars, but spokesman Steve Janisse says 67 vehi­cles were used, and 52 of those were “non-salable,” spe­cially built pro­to­types used for test­ing, engi­neer­ing and display.

[…]

Bay says the cars them­selves become like celebri­ties, some­thing he wit­nessed while shoot­ing in a remote part of the Mid­dle East. “The money they spend is pen­nies for the amount of good­will. Bum­ble­bee is one of the most famous cars in the world,” the direc­tor says. “Lit­er­ally, we’re in this poor lit­tle town in Jor­dan, and all these kids sur­rounded (the car). They all knew Bumblebee’s name.”

Nascar 18 wrapped in M&Ms and autobots

Num­ber 18 has been cov­ered in an M&Ms and Trans­form­ers themed coat — full gallery avail­able at Joe Gibbs.

Shia has “The Touch”

Shia per­forms a ren­di­tion of Stan Bush’s “The Touch” to much amuse­ment and pain.

Obama in Revenge of the Fallen

The movie in some way includes Obama, to which Bay com­ments, via Dig­i­tal Spy,

Bay said: “The Obama thing? I met him in an air­port where he was car­ry­ing his bag by him­self and we talked about movies and appar­ently he likes my movies. So I fig­ured we’ll just put him in.”

The direc­tor joked that he was able to include the up-to-date ref­er­ence because he had only com­pleted mak­ing the film last Wednes­day [June 10th].

Michael Bay in Gui­ness Book of World Records

Michael Bay is now in the record books for the largest explo­sion filmed whilst actors are present. It was shot in New Mex­ico. The NZ Her­ald, from whence this news came, offer up and expan­sive overview of Trans­form­ers 2 and have some tid­bit inter­view com­ments from Megan Fox and Shia as well,

“If Michael Bay can make me look that good in shorts, then I don’t mind if peo­ple think I’m being exploited. And it gives me an advan­tage because even if I do a mediocre per­for­mance, peo­ple don’t expect any­thing of me, so they’re impressed.” And inci­den­tally, although she is adorned with tat­toos, claims to be bisex­ual, and does her best to come across as “dan­ger­ous and dark” à la Jolie, she insists it is not cal­cu­lated. “It’s more of a curse than a bless­ing to look like Angelina,” she says, straight-faced. “Seri­ously, there are a lot of films I’ve had to pass on because I don’t want peo­ple to think I’m try­ing to emu­late her.” (Appar­ently she was offered the next Tomb Raider but turned it down for this rea­son.) As for Lebeouf, an edgy lead­ing man and an exam­ple of the core audi­ence of a film like this, says, “Trans­form­ers is escapism in the same way Star Wars was for its gen­er­a­tion. If you want magic tricks, theme park rides, the roller coaster vibe, Trans­form­ers is for you.“

Film Jour­nal talks with Orci and Kurtzman

After recov­er­ing from the Star Trek press tour, Orci and Kurtz­man answered some ques­tions from the folks at Film Jour­nal. Points include the story’s emo­tional core, the strike and the inspi­ra­tion for the sequel.

“For us, the action always emerges from the char­ac­ters; the audi­ence tunes out ran­dom action scenes that don’t move the plot for­ward or take the char­ac­ters in some new direc­tion,” Kurtz­man says. “So in Revenge of the Fallen, there are sev­eral sequences that we pitched to Michael in detail as part of the char­ac­ters’ sto­ries and he ended up shoot­ing them almost exactly as we pitched them. Of course, he also comes up with great ways to embell­ish the sequences and no one is bet­ter at that than he is.”

That infor­ma­tion will come in handy as the duo makes their long-planned tran­si­tion to direct­ing. “The plan is to find the right film for us to direct in the next cou­ple of years,” Orci reveals. “We’re happy being the guys that write the words, but we want to try every­thing. It’s pos­si­ble that we’ll each direct our own projects, but we might be too jeal­ous of what the other is doing and so we’ll both have to do it!” While nei­ther claims to have a dream project right now, there is one fran­chise that Orci says he’s hop­ing to see real­ized on the big screen some­day. “I’d love to see [Nintendo’s] The Leg­end of Zelda done right.”

Film Jour­nal

Video game pre­views and walkthroughs

More Revenge of the Fallen video game pre­views have sur­faced at Game Trail­ers, includ­ing Art Direc­tor and Pro­ducer inter­views, a Side­ways and Dev­as­ta­tor walk­through and an Opti­mus Prime down­town walk­through. Fol­low­ing these there are tow YouTube videos, includ­ing the open­ing scenes and a Break­away train­ing routine.

Human Alliance video review

Not strictly press, but not really big enough for its own post, another Human Alliance video review:

Read the rest of this entry »

Game trail­ers have posted two video game walk­throughs, firstly a three minute illus­tra­tion of the Deep Six level, in which you play as Starscream. Sec­ondly some of the mul­ti­player action.

G4 have posted a mas­sive 16 minute walk­through of the Revenge of the Fallen video game, work­ing through as either Bum­ble­bee or Starscream. A boss fight with Dev­as­ta­tor is also included.

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.

IGN have posted up two E3 2009 Trans­form­ers 2 video game pre­views, show­ing Bum­ble­bee kick­ing some ass, and then not doing so well as he gets destroyed by Megatron.

Game Trail­ers has posted a new inter­view with Peter Cullen (the voice of Opti­mus Prime) and Frank Welker (Mega­tron), wherein they dis­cuss work­ing together again on the new Revenge of the Fallen video game.

Ama­zon are offer­ing spe­cial bonuses if you pre-order the new Trans­form­ers Revenge of the Fallen video game from their website.

On offer is a ‘Gen­er­a­tion 1 Iron­hide unlock­able’, a red painted Iron­hide with touches of yellow.

Pre-order Playsta­tion 3 video game

Pre-order Xbox 360 video game

You can only get this if you pre-order the game via Amazon.

Game Spot have posted a video inter­view with the cre­ative group that brings us the Revenge of the Fallen video game. The video ana­lyzes the mul­ti­player options avail­able and refers to Black­out by his new name, ‘Grindor’.

Joys­tiq mean­while has posted a video show­ing off the game’s mul­ti­player modes as well as a hands-on review and some screenshots:

Hands-on review

Iron­i­cally, the most improved part of the game are the trans­for­ma­tions, which look ter­rific. If you jump off a build­ing and trans­form into an auto or a jet on the way down, you’ll either hit the ground with wheels screech­ing, or rocket off into the sky — pretty thrilling stuff. A cou­ple of the char­ac­ters, like Side­ways, are armed with sniper rifles, allow­ing you to grab a good van­tage point and take a few shots before zoom­ing off to a new spot. Trans­la­tion: kablam, trans­form, roll out, trans­form, shoot again.