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 | Posted by news
| Tue, June 22, 2010 at 5:45 PM |
  A blockbuster movie franchise will spend part of this summer in the Motor City.
"Transformers 3" plans to film in metro Detroit in August, according to Gabriela Gutentag, a spokeswoman for the movie.
Filming is expected to last two to three weeks.
Several locations — including Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and overseas locales — will be employed in the latest edition of the popular action series from director Michael Bay.
The series starring Shia LaBeouf, which has given prominent screen time to GM vehicles, has been a hit with moviegoers. It debuted in 2007 with "Transformers," which earned $319 million at the domestic box office. The 2009 sequel, "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," took in $402 million. The third installment is expected to open in 2011, according to IMDB.com.
Scenes for the first "Transformers" were filmed in Detroit, including at the Michigan Central Station. Bay also filmed scenes here for the 2005 movie "The Island."
"Transformers 3" has been approved for the state's tax incentives for filmmaking, according to the Michigan Film Office.
Source: Detroit Free Press
 Share on Facebook ·  Bookmark on Delicious  | Posted by manifesto
| Tue, July 07, 2009 at 9:00 PM |
 Racism: White Man Crossing The Street When He Sees A Black Man  Winnebago County, IL - Cemetary I recently had a conversation with a white female friend who admitted to me that she would be motivated to cross the street if she saw a group of young black men dressed a certain way in her path.
My initial internal reaction was "ugh," a response that I think black folks are conditioned to have when we hear that or any of the other traditional nuggets of racial profiling. Considering how she was the only person to ever admit that to my face, however, the context I had on her helped.
She's a product of an upper-middle class, suburban New England upbringing..far removed from any consistent black culture. Before moving to Chicago, she likely had very minimal daily interactions with us. So when she says that she avoids living in Chicago Neighborhood A or Chicago Neighborhood B because of "scary" stories she heard that are really the equivalent of things that happen in any major U.S. city, I take her background into account.
What really gave the issue more light is the reaction she had toward a story of mine.
Almost five years ago, as a cub newspaper reporter, I was asked to investigate the apparent razing of a century-old cemetery somewhere in unincorporated bumblef*ck Winnebago County, Illinois. When I arrived following a good, long drive from the newsroom, all I could see besides the cemetery were a farm house, the road I came in on and row upon row of corn.
Having been born and raised in Detroit, I can adapt and feel relatively comfortable in any American ‘hood because I have the sixth sense that allows me to know what to look out for. But hanging out in Bush country, knocking on a door of a farm house that reminded me of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre with barely any people in earshot/running distance? That intimidated me.
My friend laughed and told me she'd feel right at home in that environment. But would she have been justified at being offended at what was basically tacit racial profiling?
Many black folks would say, "Of course not! Look at the history! Black folks and remote Republican enclaves don't mix!" I say it's a bit more complicated than that.
From where does our capacity to racially profile derive? In the case of my friend, it comes from a sense of unfamiliarity; those of us who are street-conscious can often tell the difference between a group of black kids congregating just to congregate and trouble brewing. She probably can't, because I'm guessing at some point in her life she may have perceived the Young Black Man as the trouble-prone monolith that's frequently portrayed in mainstream media.
The problem with that is that if she didn't know me, she might lump me - an educated professional who likes baggy pants, hoodies and sideways-cocked baseball caps - in the "hoodlum" category, whereas most urban-raised black folks likely wouldn't upon first glance.
Conversely, though I grew up with more experience with whites than she did with blacks, my understanding of rural farm areas is shaped by Klu Klux Clan documentaries and movies like Rosewood. So maybe, just maybe, she might have better insight into whether I'm stepping in a hayseed hornet's nest of racism when dwelling in certain areas more familiar to her. manifesto, racism, prejudices, chicago, detroit, transformers, black, white, arabs, asians, hispanic LOS ANGELES " Harmless comic characters or racist robots? The buzz over the summer blockbuster "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" only grew Wednesday as some said two jive-talking Chevy characters were racial caricatures. Skids and Mudflap, twin robots disguised as compact hatchbacks, constantly brawl and bicker in rap-inspired street slang. They're forced to acknowledge that they can't read. One has a gold tooth.
As good guys, they fight alongside the Autobots and are intended to provide comic relief. But their traits raise the specter of stereotypes most notably seen when Jar Jar Binks, the clumsy, broken-English speaking alien from "Star Wars: Episode I " The Phantom Menace," was criticized as a caricature.
One fan called the Transformers twins "Jar Jar Bots" in a blog post online.
Todd Herrold, who watched the movie in New York City, called the characters "outrageous."
"It's one thing when robot cars are racial stereotypes," he said, "but the movie also had a bucktoothed black guy who is briefly in one scene who's also a stereotype."
"They're like the fools," said 18-year-old Nicholas Govede, also of New York City. "The comic relief in a degrading way."
Not all fans were offended. Twin brothers Jason and William Garcia, 18, who saw the movie in Miami, said they related to the characters " not their illiteracy, but their bickering.
"They were hilarious," Jason said. "Every movie has their standout character, and I think they were the ones for this movie."
In Atlanta, Rico Lawson said people were reading too much into the characters. "It was actually funny," said Lawson, 25, who saw the movie with his girlfriend in Atlanta.
That was the aim, director Michael Bay said in an interview.
"It's done in fun," he said. "I don't know if it's stereotypes " they are robots, by the way. These are the voice actors. This is kind of the direction they were taking the characters and we went with it."
Bay said the twins' parts "were kind of written but not really written, so the voice actors is when we started to really kind of come up with their characters."
Actor Reno Wilson, who is black, voices Mudflap. Tom Kenny, the white actor behind SpongeBob SquarePants, voices Skids.
Wilson said Wednesday that he never imagined viewers might consider the twins to be racial caricatures. When he took the role, he was told that the alien robots learned about human culture through the Web and that the twins were "wannabe gangster types."
"It's an alien who uploaded information from the Internet and put together the conglomeration and formed this cadence, way of speaking and body language that was accumulated over X amount of years of information and that's what came out," the 40-year-old actor said. "If he had uploaded country music, he would have come out like that."
It's not fair to assume the characters are black, he said.
"It could easily be a Transformer that uploaded Kevin Federline data," Wilson said. "They were just like posers to me."
Kenny did not respond to an interview request Wednesday.
"I purely did it for kids," the director said. "Young kids love these robots, because it makes it more accessible to them."
Screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman said they followed Bay's lead in creating the twins. Still, the characters aren't integral to the story, and when the action gets serious, they disappear entirely, notes Tasha Robinson, associate entertainment editor at The Onion.
"They don't really have any positive effect on the film," she said.  LOS ANGELES - It’s been a long recovery for Shia LaBeouf since the night his Ford F-150 flipped during a late-night collision last July, injuring his left hand" and in a new interview with Playboy, the star said it’ll never be the same again.
“Permanently f****d,” he told Playboy. “I’ll never be back to 100 percent or have full recovery. I can’t zipper my zipper or button my shirt without extreme pain. But I chalk it up as my own s**t. This accident is what I needed in my life. I’m not in control. For the first time, I can admit that and know that"- the hand is like a tattoo that says MISTAKE.”
Shia, 22, told the mag he shouldn’t have gotten behind the wheel that fateful night.
“I had a whiskey and three beers,” he said. “I’m not going to start speaking on law stuff now and corner myself, but the fact that I ever got into the car was a mistake.”
“I’m in AA now, too,” he continued. “I’ve had drinks, but it has been a leveling-out process. Am I an alcoholic? I may not be. I don’t know. But I also know that in the situation I’m in, with temptations what they are, I have no room for alcohol in my life.”
As previously reported on AccessHollywood.com, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office announced last September that there was “insufficient evidence” to charge the actor with drunken driven, though his license was suspended in January as a result of his “refusal of chemical tests” directly following the accident.
Despite his troubles, the young...click to continue reading
The Shia LeBeouf Fan BVConnect
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