Well, for those of you who may not know already, I’ve gone ahead and launched my new movie review and editorial website called “Movie Reviews To Go” which you can find here: www.moviereviewstogo.com

I’ve been needing a place to function as a proper hosting area for my movie reviews and editorials since I was really just making them and throwing them up on either my personal page here or just on my facebook account. I don’t have hunge ambitions for this page (I’m quite happy with my regular full time job with AMC Theaters) but I hope a bunch of my old followers from The Movie Blog will find me again and participate in the discussion there.

So please bookmark and follow my new site. This site will now just function for my “life” stuff, and all my movie stuff will be over at Movie Reviews To Go. Hope to see you there.

Yesterday headlines were shooting all over the blogsphere proclaiming that it has been CONFIRMED that a long awaited “Arrested Development” movie is coming. But when you stop to actually look and listen to what was really said you quickly realized that nothing of the sort has happened… and unfortunately, probably never will. Check out my video blog for why:

So please take the next little bit and give the movie a look. Then tell me what you thought. Cheers!

No, I’m not a big fan of the newer films (Episodes 1,2 and 3), but I like to think I gave them a fair shake and saw them each multiple times in the theatres when they came out.

With that being said… there is no chance in hell I’ll be putting my money down to buy these new Blu-Rays that are coming out. And here’s why:

Let me say this upfront: I am NOT completely against the idea of Murphy hosting the Oscars. I actually think there is some real potential there. I like Eddie Murphy. I think he’s a talented dude.

But with that being said, I do have 3 significant issues with his selection that I outline in the video below. Give it a watch and let me know your thoughts.

PROBLEM #1 – WHY SHOOT SENTINEL PRIME DOWN?
In the movie we see that Sentinel Prime is escaping from Cybertron and the Decepticons with his pillars. During the escape, the Decepticons shoot his ship out of the sky causing it to hurl through the galaxy and crash landing on earth’s moon. But later in the film we learn Sentinel had defected to the Decepticons and had arranged with Megatron to meet up with him on earth. HUH!?!?! So why the hell did the Decepticons shoot his ship down?

PROBLEM #2 – HOW COULD MEGATRON MAKE A DEAL WITH PRIME WHEN HE WAS FROZEN IN ICE?
In Transformers 3 we learn that Megatron and Sentinel Prime made a deal and a plan to meet up on earth and Sentinel was on his way there to meet Megatron when the Decepticons inexplicably (see problem #1) shot him down. The problem is that according to the first Transformers movie, Megatron crashed on earth A LONG TIME AGO… like 1000 years ago. So how did this plan get hatched between him and Sentinel when he’s been frozen in Earth’s ice for that long?

PROBLEM #3 – IF THE DECEPTICONS WON THE WAR, WHY IS CYBERTRON BARREN?
The Transformers movies up to this point had suggested that the Autobot/Decepticon war had driven them to mutual near extinction and thus Cybertron was nothing but a barren waste. But in Transformers 3 the narrative tells us that the final Autobots were fleeing because the Decepticons had clearly won. If they clearly won… why was Cybertron barren?

PROBLEM #4 – WAIT, WHAT ABOUT THE SHIP THEY TOOK TO THE MOON?
Near the end of the film the humans tell they Autobots they had to leave earth, to which Sam replies “they have no way to leave earth”. WHAT!?!?! Just 30 minutes earlier we see Optimus Prime and Wratchet fly to the moon in a ship to recover Sentinel Prime.

PROBLEM #5 – WHY DID SENTINEL DECLINE THE MATRIX OF LEADERSHIP?
In one of the better moments in the film, Optimus kneels down before Sentinel Prime and offers him back the Autobot Matrix of Leadership… his greatest source of power. At the time it was touching that Sentinel declined to take it… but once we learned that Sentinel had betrayed the Autobots and was planning on destroying them and enslaving the earth it made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

PROBLEM #6 – SINCE WHEN DOES THE GREAT OPTIMUS PRIME THROW HISSY FIT SILENT TREATMENT TEMPER TANTRUMS?
This isn’t really a continuity or logic problem, but it is a massive character inconsistency. Optimus Prime is the most noble, wise and intelligent warrior in the galaxy… but when he discovers a piece of Sentinel’s ship engine he transforms into truck mode and had a little silent treatment temper tantrum like a 5 year old child??? Excuse me?

There are a dozen other major problems I had with the movie… but these ones stood out to me the most. Lots of things to like about Transformers 3… hell I’ll probably even see it again… but how any of the above problems got past an editor is beyond me.

What are your thoughts on those problems. Were there easy and logical answers presented in the movie that I just missed (I’ve only seen it once so far)?

So here’s some backstory. As many of you know I have a background in podcasting. As a matter of fact I was podcasting before people even called it podcasting. When I was running things over at The Movie Blog, I started the very first movie podcast… a podcast that eventually won us the “Podcast of the Year” awards at the annual Weblog Awards (beating out my all time favorite podcast “This Week In Tech” aka TWIT).

So early in 2011 I had an idea for a new podcast… it wasn’t for any particular website but was really just an excuse for Dennis Tzeng, Jon “Soul Video” Green and I to do together. Between Dennis and I we had all the gear and tech know-how to put together a fairly good and simple show and we all loved talking movies. We brought our friend Roth Cornet on and started doing FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION.

The idea was always in the back of my head that IF we enjoyed doing the show and IF we were happy with the quality and IF we were getting positive feedback from the community that watched it, I’d see if one of the major film sites would want to partner up and have FYC become their podcast.

This is where Steve “Frosty” Weintraub of Collider.Com enters the picture.

Steve and I have casually known each other for a couple of years, bumping into each other from time to time at various screenings or press junkets. Then a few months back I was tasked by AMC to find 3 contestants for an AMC STUBS movie blogger contest, 1 in New York, 1 in Chicago and 1 in Los Angeles. I gave a few webmasters in LA a call to see if any of their staff would want to participate in the contest, and Steve said “Staff!?!?! I’ll do it myself!”. With Steve as our LA contestant he and I had a chance to chat on a few more occasions.

Steve has the “gift of gab” and I always enjoyed talking movies with him whenever we had the chance. I eventually started thinking about asking him if he’d like to come on our FYC podcast. That’s when it dawned on me that his site, Collider.Com, didn’t have a podcast of their own… and at the same time I had been feeling like it was time to take FYC to the “next level”. Seemed like a good fit to me.

Long story short… I called Steve and threw the idea by him of having FYC become Collider’s podcast, and he told me that he’d already been thinking the exact same thing. It’s a seemingly perfect fit, and after talking about it for a couple of weeks we finally decided to move ahead with it… starting this Friday!

So there you have it. This Friday our first new episode of FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION will appear on Collider.Com

The show will still be viewable and sponsored by Dennis’ ThinkHero.Com, on our FYC Facebook page and even here on my own site, the podcast subscriptions will all still work, the core cast of myself, Dennis, Soul and Roth are all staying the same with the semi-regular addition of Steve.

Myself, Steve and the rest of the crew are all excited about this partnership and can’t wait to get started. We hope you’ll all check out the show and join us for the ride.

Cheers!

3 months ago I never would have imagined writing an opening sentence like that… but there it is as large as life itself. Despite the fact that I train once and sometimes twice a day, despite the fact that I have no family history of heart problems, despite the fact that I do no drink, despite the fact that I do not smoke, despite the fact that I’m under 40 years old… I had 2 heart attacks in under an hour.

It was late April and I was at the gym just finishing up a fairly intense Muay Thai class. I felt totally fine. I put my shoes back on, sat down to drink something and the first heart attack hit me. I swear I just thought it was some kind of chest muscle cramping up.

Let’s face it… those of us who have the privilege of watching movies and then writing about movies for a living are a pretty lucky bunch, but unfortunately we usually sit on our asses to watch movies, and then sit on our asses to write about them… and in the middle of a 7 hour stint in front of our computers writing our latest review or editorial, we eat like shit throwing down whatever is quick and easy for us to eat because we don’t have the time to get up from our desks to make something half decent for ourselves… so a bag of Doritos, a 2 liter bottle of Coke and some McDonalds usually has to do. I’ve polished off more bowls of ice cream in that very position than I can count.

And also let’s be honest… us web guys are not the most physically active people on the planet. I highly doubt a group of crack dealers would tremble in fear at the thought of crossing paths with an angry group of movie bloggers.

So what’s my point?

I love the online movie community. I count many of you as friends… some as frenimies, and yes there are a few I just don’t like… but all based on things that in the grand scheme of life are small and probably petty. The reality is that if this heart attack thing can happen to me… a young guy who trains, doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke and fits in no real risk category, then it can happen to any of us… and I’d honestly HATE to hear it happens to any of you… no matter which of those three categories you fall under.

So as trivial and trite as it admittedly sounds… take a few minutes to get outside. Take some extra time to go to the grocery story and at least buy some apples. Skip one trip to McD’s or Wendy’s this week. Go join George for some Vollyball this weekend, go bowling, skip one dessert… do anything. Just please start taking small steps to take care of yourself. Life is short and our little online community is better with you in it… even if you actually liked Transformers 3.

As for me, things are good. I went back to training 2 weeks after getting out of the hospital, I’m feeling good, trying to eat a little better than I did before (cut back on my ice cream consumption A LOT)… but I got lucky.

Thanks for reading. I hope it wasn’t a complete waste of your time. Looking forward to seeing you all at Comic Con.

~John