Here’s a rundown of how it went:

*     The show kicked with Fred Armisen doing Moammar Gadhafi, explaining to the U.N. that his speech earlier in the week was all messed up ’cause of jet lag.  Armisen generally makes me chuckle, so there’s that, but this was mostly lame.

*     New opening credits!  No Casey Wilson or Michaela Watkins anywhere to be found!

*     Megan Fox comes out and automatically struck me as seeming way more confident than I would have expected.  Too bad the writers stranded her with a dead-end sketch involving her assuming that even though she didn’t remember posing for all those nude photos of her on the internet, she must have … ’cause, you know, they’re on the internet, so they must be real.  She’s dumb; get it?  Lame.

*     Funny faux-commercial for Bladdivan, a drug that helps you conquer your fear of urinating in public.

*     Fox and Kristen Wiig — mmm, Kristen Wiig — play stewardesses who very calmly explain to passengers an increasingly terrible set of circumstances they are about to have to face.  It wasn’t as funny as that makes it sound, and usually, when the first post-monologue sketch is this lame, you know you’re in for a bumpy show.  Wiig gave it her all, though, and Fox did a decent job, too.

*     Will Forte plays a guy who’s gone to Russia and is bartering with Bill Hader over which Russian bride he wants to purchase.  His choices are Megan Fox and Fred Armisen … who is $10 cheaper.  This one was fairly amusing, mainly because all of the people in it not named Megan Fox are very, very funny.  But Fox was only called on to vamp, and she that quite well, so score for her, I guess.

*     A Digital Short in which Fox is on a date with an incredibly awkward Will Forte, playing a SWAT team commander (!) who has skipped work to go out with her.  Pretty funny, and I was actually mildly impressed by Fox’s ability to seem down-to-earth.  Is it possible that she could be a decent actress?

*     Kenan Thompson reprises his Grady Wilson infomercial character, this time hawking a DVD called Grady Wilson’s Burning Up the Bedsheets, another demonstration of ludicrous sex moves.  Fox shows up to help illustrate, and it’s another fairly amusing sketch.  Damn it, I just laughed at Kenan Thompson!

*     U2 comes out and performs a passable version of “Breathe.”  As usual, Bono seems mildly insane.

*     Weekend Update, mildly amusing.  Thompson shows up again, doing his Jean K. Jean bit; this character is one of THE worst in the SNL repertoire, and why anyone allows Thompson to do it is a mystery to me.  Flipside of that: Wiig ought to be required to do her Judy Grimes bit at least once a month.  Hilarious.   Mmmm, Kristen Wiig…

*     Fox doing an infomerical for live lounge, a phone sex line.  Mildly amusing at best.  The writers seem to have abandoned any attempts at giving Fox any actual comedy to perform; too bad, since in the stewardess sketch she seemed like she could actually pull it off.

*     U2 again, this time doing a good version of “Moment of Surrender.”  Bono does some freestyling, and does a decent job with it.

*     New cast member Jenny Slate, whom I find rather attractive, gets to debut a new character: Dawn, the host of Biker Chick Chat.  This is exactly what you’d think it would be, except not particularly funny.  It mainly consisted of Slate, Wiig, and Fox saying “frickin’ ” and “friggin’ ” a lot, except for the time Slate fluffed it and actually said “fuckin’ ” instead.  The look on her face as soon as she realized it was one of pure horror; it was kinda of adorable.  I hope she doesn’t get in too much trouble for it.

Video below:

*     Another Digital Short, this one featuring Andy Samberg showing up for a Movie Night date with Megan Fox at her apartment.  She introduces him to her roommate, Optimus, a fat guy wearing an Optimus Prime mask.  He “transforms,” which involves taking all of his clothes off except for the helmet.  Then Bumblebee shows up, and he transforms, too.  Not a classic, but amusing enough.

*     And now, another episode of Your Mom Talks to Megan Fox While You Get Ready!  It’s Wiig playing somebody’s mother, engaging in awkward mom-chat with Megan Fox while Fox’s friend is finishing dressing.  Amusing thanks to Wiig, who is currently one of this show’s real saving graces.

*     Fox outros, and just like Coldplay did last season, U2 gets to play part of another number.  It’s one of my favorites, “Ultraviolet (Light My Way)”!  Bono is swinging from the ceiling on the microphone cord!  NBC only broadcasts half of it!

Final thoughts

Not a particularly good season premiere, but I did chuckle a fair amount, and I come away frmo this having more respect for Megan Fox than I had when the show began.  In that sense, I guess it was a success for her.

Next week: Ryan Reynolds and Lady Gaga!

It can’t help you get through reading it, though; that’s on you.

(1)  Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs  ($30.1 million, $9651 per screen):  Not too shabby an opening for a kiddie show opening during the first couple of months of the new school year.  It’s got a cute, visually appealing concept, and the movie got decent reviews, so it’ll probably play reasonably well over the next few weeks.  This is the kind of movie that keeps theatres afloat during the lean months of September.

(2)  The Informant!  ($10.5 million, $4210 per screen):  Let’s just say it right out in the open: the studio kinda just dumped this into theatres.  Opening a movie for adults this early on in the football season is a bit like committing box-office suicide, and this tepid opening reflects that.  Add in the fact that a decent number of the rubes who bought tickets attendees probably expected to see something more along the lines The Bourne Informant and I would guess Matt Damon is going to have to rely on Invictus to bring him all of his true ’09 glory.  Too bad; I hear this is a pretty great movie.

(3)  I Can Do Bad All By Myself  ($10 million, $4461 per screen, $37.9 million total):  As is typically the case with Tyler Perry movies, this one nosedove in its second weekend, dropping 57%.  That’s still a good total for a low-budget film, though, and the descent will level off from here, resulting in a total in the $50-60 million range.  Trust me, nobody will be less inclined to bankroll a Tyler Perry movie because of this one.

That won’t be true for the next few names discussed.

(4)  Love Happens  ($8.4 million, $4455 per screen):  An exceptionally weak debut for Jennifer Aniston’s new chick flick, especially considering how well her last couple of films (Marley & Me and He’s Just Not That Into You) performed.  Folks, these are the facts: nobody goes to see a movie because of Jennifer Aniston.  She may not keep people away, either, not if the concept is good (see previous two films); but if there’s not much of a hook, then you can expect a dud.  Here’s another fact: Aaron Eckhart ain’t much of a hook.

You can damn well bet that those two actors’ agents are having a shitty week already.

However, not as shitty as the agent for…

(5)  Jennifer’s Body  ($6.8 million, $2517 per screen):  …Megan Fox.  For the past half-a-year or so, Fox has been all over magazine covers, all over the internet, all over television; omnipresent wouldn’t be the right word, but it’d be close.  In short, the industry has been doing its damnedest to turn Fox into Angelina Jolie 2.0, and for a while there, it looked like they were making some excellent progress.

Screech, crash, bang, boom.  Looks like that progress has been halted.

This is a terrible performance for a movie as relentlessly promoted as this one was.  (The per-screen average is particularly awful.)  And since Megan Fox was nearly the sole focus of that promotion, it really can’t be seen any other way than as a referendum on the actress herself.  It may not kill her career, but it’s certainly going to wound it.

Emerging marginally less scathed: screenwriter Diablo Cody.  The movie got decent reviews, and at least a few of those reviews suggested that the marketing campaign would have been better served focusing on Cody’s dialogue.  Also, this fail is balanced out by a big weekend win for Cody: her Showtime series The United States of Tara picked up a big Emmy nod this weekend for it sstar, Toni Collette.

Also emerging totally unscathed: the adorable Amanda Seyfried, who got mostly great reviews for her role in Jennifer’s Body.  Her star power lives to be tested another day.

(6)  9  ($5.4 million, $2650 per screen, $22.7 million total):  An uninspired second weekend.  This one is fading into cult obscurity pretty quickly.

(7)  Inglourious Basterds  ($3.6 million, $1430 per screen, $109.9 million total):  In terms of pure dollars, this one is now Quentin Tarantino’s most successful film to date.  That’s a big win for everybody involved.  It’ll be interesting to see how the movie fares come awards season.

(8)  All About Steve  ($3.4 million, $1575 per screen, $26.6 million total):  Giving back almost all of those points she earned with The Proposal this summer, this one is a big black eye for Sandra Bullock.

(9)  Sorority Row  ($2.4 million, $961 per screen, $8.8 million):  $961 per screen!  That’s terrible.  Between this and Jennifer’s Body, it’s been a rock-bottom couple of weekends for horror films.  If not for the final flick in the top 10, people would be talking about how horror is dead … again.

(10)  The Final Destination  ($2.3 million, $1316 per screen, $62 million total):  The flick took a big 57% hit this weekend, no doubt due to the opening of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs on 3D screens.  The scrapping over 3D screens can be fairly rough, and if more theatres don’t start adding more compatible screens soon, the format is going to have a hard time ever truly becoming anything more than a gimmick.

Next week brings Bruce Willis’s Surrogates, which looks okay and might actually succeed in tearing a few dudes away from the football for a couple of hours.  I’m going to guess that it opens at about $27 million.

Also on the dockets: Astro Boy on Wednesday (nobody cares), Fame (nobody cares), and Pandorum (nobody cares).

To catch you up to speed, here’s a plot synopsis: After an unfortunate night in the woods with a mysterious indie rock band, Jennifer (Megan Fox) isn’t the person she used to be. She’s kinda bitchy, extremely flirtatious…and oh yeah, she’s now possessed by a demon which maked her kill boys.  Gore, Guts, Music, and Lesbianism ensue. Her best friend, “Needy” Lesnicki (Amanda Seyfried), a plain-Jane nerd must figure out a way to stop Jennifer before she kills the rest of the boys in their small town of Devil’s Kettle.

First off, the film is not terrible. Absolutely ridiculous, but at least it’s entertaining and can keep you interested, unlike Fox’s previous movie of the year Transformers. It’s one of those movies that knows it’s ridiculous and doesn’t expect the audience to think anything otherwise.

Diablo Cody, who also wrote the smash-hit Juno, seems as if she is trying to be the female John Hughes; she is taking high school experiences and telling them with a remarkable sense of sincerity and relatibility. Needy is the girl who wants to be friends with Jenniger so much, she’s willing to do anything she asks.  Hardly anyone wants her, except for her devoted boyfriend Chip. Jennifer, on the other, can have any boy she wants but teases to a great extent, before she, y’know, eats them. Ahh, the memories of high school…

As far as the acting goes, there is really only one terrible performance in the movie: Megan Fox. She’s never really had to actually act before, and it’s evident in her performance. She’s always gonna be the eye candy in every movie she does until her career fizzles out in about five years and she will no longer be relevant. After seeing this movie, I kinda can’t wait for that day to come.

That’s not to say no one else did a good job in this movie. Amanda Seyfried is pitch-perfect in her role. She knows exactly how to carry herself and what goes into a character, because she’s never been in Megan Fox’s position. And she’s still hot, even with the nerd-girl persona.

The supporting cast has much smaller roles except for Chip, Needy’s loving boyfriend, who also does a great job. By far, my favorite performance was from that of J.K. Simmons, who played Juno’s father. He returns as a curly haired, hook-handed teacher who sounds like he’s related to Sarah Palin. His is a very entertaining and humorous role.

The biggest surprise was Adam Brody’s performance as the lead singer of Low Shoulder. While it very obviously isn’t him singing, he turns in a very solid performance, which I thought he wouldn’t do. Well played, Mr. Brody. Well played.

There are many flaws with the movie though. Diablo struck gold with the cutesy and quirky dialogue of Juno, but that strategy doesn’t work here. She tried to infuse nearly every line of dialogue with the same material, and many times, it falls flat. The movie is funny, but often it’s not because of the dialogue.

Also, I’m not sure of the budget on this film, but most of the set looks like it was ripped out of Twilight. There are certain scenes that are shot with the same dark, brooding style as the vampire flick. And, there are a few set pieces that look exactly like it, too. So much so, that for a minute or two, you might catch yourself asking, “When did this turn into a movie about Edward and Bella?”

Overall, it’s a pretty solid attempt at horror-comedy. However, it’s not one of those that deserves more than one viewing. Most people are gonna see this in the hopes of seeing Megan Fox naked anyway (Sorry, guys, doesn’t happen). I think that it will capture enough an audience to have everyone talking this weekend though. I’m gonna go with an 8/10 for this one.

Ahh, what the heck. I’ll even throw up one more picture of Fox for you. Have fun, you crazy pervs!

Then, amuse yourself by thinking about the various studio executives who are –  probably right at this very moment — weeping in bathrooms, hoping nobody will walk in and catch them shedding tear over having scuttled Blomkamp’s Halo movie for fear that the director was an unproven quantity.

Well, if that trailer is any standard of measure, it looks like producer Peter Jackson was right all along (big surprise): Blomkamp was, in fact, the dude that project needed.

Speaking of trailers to make your willy wobble, here’s one for Jennifer’s Body, the Diablo Cody-penned, Karyn Kusama-directed, Megan Fox-starring horror flick coming out this September.

That’s the one showing in theatres. There’s also a red-band trailer, which is completely different.  I couldn’t find an embeddable copy, but you can watch it here.

Now, I have to admit, I was prepared to give this movie a big ole’ cold shoulder.  I was mostly unimpressed by Juno, Kusama’s Aeon Flux was a piece a crap, and I’m such a vehement Transformers hater that I can’t even manage to find Megan Fox all that hot.  Imagine, then, my surprise to think the trailers for this are pretty damn awesome.

Some of this may have to do with the presence of Amanda Seyfried, who can do no wrong, and doesn’t appear to have done any here, either.  And surprise, surprise, Megan Fox looks like she might have a bit more than simply Being Hot in her playbook; you can never really tell from a trailer, of course, but at least this movie has given her something to, uh, sink her teeth into.

Anyways, color me interested.

If only I was what?  What qualities am I lacking that make it possible for other people to love these movies, whereas I dislike them so entirely that I can’t even quite remember what the second one was about only a few hours after seeing it?

My knee-jerk reaction is to say that these are movies for stupid people.  But, really, that’s an asshole thing to say, isn’t it?  Yes, it is.  And it’s also not true.  I know perfectly intelligent people who dug the hell out of the first one, and I’d guess that most of them will dig the hell out of this one, too.  They’re not stupid at all; some of them are way smarter than I’ll ever think about being.

But I think they must be turning their brains off when they sit down to watch this movie.  Either that, or they are appreciating it on some level that I’m simply not privy to.  I know — or, at least, strongly suspect — that it’s not on a level of fidelity to the source material; I’ve heard from too many Transformers fans who feel that their franchise has been butchered almost beyond repair by these movies to believe that it’s because they’re just thrilled to see the characters on screen.

Is it because these movies represent a new industry standard for digital effects, or for on-screen action?  Well … maybe that’s what people think.  However, as somebody who has seen all the same movies these people would be using as points of comparison, I can categorically say that in no way do this movie’s effects or action scenes represent a new gold standard for the industry.  And neither did they in the first movie.

So what is it?  Just what the blue fuck is so great about these movies?

I’ll answer that question, for myself if for nobody else: not a god damned thing.

These movies suck.  It’s just that simple.  Revenge of the Fallen is one limp scene after another after another.  I thought this movie would never end.  It’s two and a half hours, and not since we invented the waiting room at a children’s cancer ward has two and a half hours seemed like such a long time to be in one place.

Nothing works in this movie, almost literally.

Shia LaBeouf, who was excellent in the first one, is mostly wasted in this one, despite being in what seemed like almost every scene.  He does a lot of running, and a lot of looking concerned, and not much else.  I’m glad he’s a star, and I hope he does better in the future.

Megan Fox … well, she’s Megan Fox.  If you dig her, then you’ll probably want to see this movie.  But I’ve got to say, I do not dig her, at least not in the Transformers movies.  She’s got a sort of vapidity to her that I simply cannot abide.  That, combined with her olive skin and over-ripe lips, would serve her well in movies that required her face to be ejaculated upon, but as far as I can tell, Fox has no innate personality.  And I know for damn sure that Michael Bay is incapable of imbuing her with one on film, so nearly every scene she is in is a complete and utter waste of time.  Sure, fellas, have at her; if I want to watch gorgeous in motion, an adjective made flesh, then I’ll go see the next Amy Adams movie, and let you have the Megan Foxes of the world all to yourself.

I’m being harsh on Fox, and I probably shouldn’t be.  I’ve never seen her in a movie that didn’t start with the syllable Trans-, and since neither of those movies required any acting of her, I have literally no idea whether or not she can act.  It could well be that she’s got tons of talent; I’ll get back to you on that once I’ve seen Jennifer’s Body and/or Jonah Hex, after which I will hopefully have gotten a look at a more interesting take on what she can do.  Michael Bay wants only to use her as a kewpie doll, and frankly, that offends me.  I know it’s hard for me to plausibly seem indignant over her underutilization here when I was just making jokes about her being better suited to taking facials on-screen, but Michael Bay is doing nothing to discourage those sorts of pornographic associations; he does nothing to directly encourage them, but there is simply no question that Mikaela exists only as safely sexualized eye-candy.  Baby, that shit don’t fly in 2009, and it baffles me that more women aren’t at least a little annoyed by it.

Speaking of shit that don’t fly in 2009, did I mention the ghettobots?  This movie has a couple of twin Autobots who speak in a ghetto dialect, have gold teeth, and apparently can’t read.  Coming from another kind of ghetto, one pint-sized Decepticon speaks in a Jersey-mafia-style Italianate.  I guess it’s supposed to be funny to hear that kind of stuff coming out of a robot; same goes for the ghettobots’ dialogue.  But I have to ask: why is it that the robots we’re supposed to laugh at, rather than marvel at, all have ethnic voices?  Maybe there’s one that doesn’t fit that bill, and I just don’t remember it … but I don’t think there is.  And I’ve got to say, that’s pretty damned offensive.  Maybe in the next movie, we can get one to be tight with money and constantly say “oy vey!”

The movie has way more problems than these, though.  The story … well, actually, I’m not in a position to comment much on the story.  I just watched the movie, but I’ll be damned if I can remember much about it.  It’s got something to do with Sam getting a big chunk of info downloaded into his brain.  This coincides with pieces of the Allspark being stolen by Decepticons so that they can revive Megatron, who can then be a part of the plot by The Fallen to finish the job he started eons previously of destroying the Earth.

Why is he doing this?  It’s got something to do with needing the sun’s energy.  I think.  Why Megatron was vital to this plot, I do not know.  Why The Fallen was just sitting there on his ass all those millennia rather than invading Earth and finishing the job, I also do not know.  I don’t know why the Autobots would just keep the shards of the Allspark on Earth if they knew they were that dangerous; these fuckers can fly in space, so why wouldn’t they have just gathered the pieces up and sailed ‘em into the fucking sun?

It could well be that some of these things make sense if you’re paying close enough attention.  I wouldn’t know about that.  If light can be shed on my poor brain, then please, feel free to do so.  Until somebody does so persuasively, I’m going to continue to believe that the story is garbage.

The screenplay was written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, returning from the “triumph” of the first film.  They had better luck with their revamped Star Trek, but I feel safe in saying that J.J. Abrams had a lot to do with that, and Michael Bay is no J.J. Abrams.  He seems to have encouraged the writers to wedge in even more “hilarious” comedic scenes than the first movie had.  Didja ever wonder what Sam’s mom might be like if she got stoned?  This movie’s got you covered.  Did you ever wonder how a King Kong-sized robot would fart?  This movie’s got you covered on that topic, too.  Robotic testicles?  Yep.  A leg-humping mini-Decepticon?  You bet, pal; comin’ right up.  Loved John Turturro in the first movie?  Well, he’s got an even bigger part in this one (and, happily, he’s at least watchable in the sequel, whereas in the first one his mere presence was execrable, almost as Bay’d wanted Rob Schneider but couldn’t get him).

The movie sends Sam off to college, but it does so for no real reason (yawn-inducingly, it’s supposed to introduce “character”-based “tension” into the “story” of Sam’s “romance” with Mikaela).  It gets him off campus again in about ten minutes.  In that time: his mother eats some special brownies; he goes to a frat party; he gets tempted by a supposedly hot girl (played by an unappealing actress so skinny she makes Megan Fox look like Danny McBride); he gets a roommate who just so happens to run a website (utterly irrelevant to the plot) about the coverup of alien robots on Earth; he freaks out in a class taught by Professor Dwight Schrute; and so forth.  It’s like a Rodney Dangerfield movie for a few minutes there, only without any laughs.

The whole movie goes like that.  An element is introduced, and then discarded, and another element is brought forth as a replacement.  I’d call it episodic, but the episode would be too lengthy a measurement for this movie’s attention span.  This thing is like a loosely connected series of webisodes.  Now, I know attention spans aren’t what they used to be, but this is ridiculous even by 2009 standards.

Thing is, that approach can work: witness Star Trek, which bounces from one thing to the next at roughly the same speed, but manages to do so with consistent throughlines in its themes and performances.  Again, this is where J.J. Abrams reveals himself to be a vastly superior director to Michael Bay.  Bay will win the battle at the box office, but he doesn’t deserve to; it’s like when Crash won the Oscar all over again, just naked injustice.

So, Honk, the effects are awesome, though, right?

Wrong, muthafucka.  They are not awesome.  They’re occasionally good, but all too often, nothing seems to have any weight.  In about 95% of the shots, the effects may look kinda real, but they do not feel real in that undefinable way that truly great effects do.

The effects themselves are not to blame.  Again, that’s Bay at work.  He creates an air that simply does not allow for anything resembling a genuine emotion.  People buy into effects — which often depict something patently unreal — because they form an emotional attachment to a character or situation, and that attachment briefly cons their minds into accepting as reality something which does not exist.  It’s a magic trick, pure sleight of hand … a moment in which you realize you have no idea which shell the marble is beneath.

Michael Bay has no magic in his approach.  None whatsoever.  He doesn’t care if you’re wondering which shell the marble is under; he’s too busy kicking over the table and screaming in your face, “IT’S UNDER THE ONE IN THE MIDDLE!”  Because of that, while the effects might be significant technological achievements, as artistic achievements they are merely mediocre.

If you think otherwise, compare literally anything in this movie with the shot of the metallic skeleton rising from the flames toward the end of The Terminator.  Compare it to King Kong on the Empire State Building in either the original or the Peter Jackson version of King Kong.  Compare it to The Thing’s head stretching off of the rest of its body, snapping off, and turning into a spider-legged abomination in Carpenter’s The Thing.

The fact of the matter is that people only love movies because they form connections to them, and through movies, they form connections to other people, if they’re doing it right.  And at the end of the day, or at the beginning of it or in the middle, I cannot imagine why anybody would form an attachment to this movie.  It has no soul.  It has no spark of life, of meaning, of philosophy; it has no logic, it has no wit, it has no romance, or mystery, or sentiment; it has no empathy for or understanding of what it means to be a human, or even of what it might mean to be a robot.

This is a movie made by a charlatan for people whom I can only describe as cinematically illiterate.  If that offends you, then I don’t apologize; instead, I point you toward the truly great popcorn flicks: movies like Star Wars, The Dark Knight, Lethal Weapon, Predator, Terminator 2, The Wrath of Khan, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Lord of the Rings, Casino Royale, Aliens, Jaws, and so many more.  Movies like Transformers need not end up being movies like Transformers; it’s entirely possible for them to be something better and more meaningful.

You deserve those better movies, and so do I.

And when this much money is spent making a movie, call me crazy, but maybe a little of it ought to have been set aside to make sure that a better movie was the result.  Instead, we get this.  A pile of frozen cat turds with a note that says “Fudge — Enjoy!”

I, for one, ain’t buying it.

Sloth now make amend.

Slove love Chuck.  Sloth also love chick.  For example, aptly-name Megan Fox on set new movie Jonah Hex:

Baby … Ruth?

Now, Sloth have no idea what Jonah Hex about, and Sloth not care.  Sloth love Megan Fox!

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