Michael Bay

When I get frustrated at how Michael Bay* does visual storytelling, waving my hands and shouting “coherent sequence of images” and “not crossing the line” and “ignorance of a film grammar built up through trial and error over a century” while flecks of spittle fly across the room and my eyes get progressively more bloodshot…
…I sometimes wonder if this is how people felt when their kids started listening to rap music**.
And this thought bothers me.
* no i have not seen transformers 2 and probably wouldn’t go even if Pearce bought me a ticket like he did for the first one
** or Elvis, or jazz, or whatever

5 thoughts on “Michael Bay”

  1. These days I’ve just learned to be happy when a director has invested in a tripod and doesn’t film everything in the nausea-inducing Shakey-o-Cam.

  3. My initial enthusiasm has worn off, and probably the only way I would actually go is if someone bought me a ticket. Paul-the-editor’s review was that it was so bad he can’t watch any American movies for a while.
    I actually am really hoping for a Transformers 2 review from Baudrillard.

  4. On Friday nights I stand on my balcony and yell at all the drunk clubber kids to get off my lawn.
    I didn’t mind Transformers 2, although I did fall asleep for a while in the build up to the climax. Much more than the confusing editing, bizarre action sequences and crossing of the line I was upset by the treatment of women. They are all incredibly hot and at the same time so desperate for any male attention at all that they will leap into bed with any man that happens to look at them. Even if its Shia Lebeouf. It was weird.

  5. No, honestly, I don’t think you can draw a line between Michael Bay’s movies and the emergence of a novel art form, like Hip-hop, or Jazz.
    Bartok’s actually made a good point in his first post – the moving camera. While long a cinematic technique, I think one can make a good arguement that it wasn’t until Tarantino became such a success with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction did it become a central part of a lot of modern film-making.
    You can probably also make the same point to the CG work of the likes of Cameron, Spielburg, Jackson now becoming an accepted part of the art form.
    On the other hand, Bay’s inability to tell a visual story hasn’t become an integral part of movie making, despite his huge box office success. And that’s because, of course, incompetent visual storytellers having box office success is nothing new, and the history of cinema tells us that, after the initial wave of hype and hoopla, the movies slip into that famous category of films that Empire gives 5 star reviews for but then drops them to 3 stars in the DVD review, and apologises for in their end-of-year round up.
    Y’know. I really should’ve made this a post on my own blog. 😀

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