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No humans. No Michael Bay. Two campaigns. Three-player online (only) drop-in/drop-out co-op Transformers with a link to the past and a Gears of War amount of gunfire. Happier?

Last week, the developers of Transformers: War For Cybertron began the live demo of their summer game with an audacious claim. "The goal was not to make the best Transformers game ever," Matt Tieger, lead designer of this new game was telling Kotaku. "The goal was to make a great game that was a Transformers game."

War For Cybertron is a fictional fresh start for Transformers, launching as a game made by High Moon Studios and supported by new toys from Hasbro. It's an all-robots take on Transformers that puts the Autobots and Decepticons on Cybertron at the crisis point of their civil war. It is an action game spread across what Tieger said are two entirely distinct, seven-chapter campaigns, one for the Decepticons that sees the forces of Megatron rise to revolution, and one for the Autobots that sees a figure named Optimus lead the resistance and become Optimus Prime.

The game is built in the Unreal Engine 3, rendering the densely-detailed Transformers with the girth and heft of a Marcus Fenix. Action is largely linear, three selectable characters, AI or human-controlled, in combat across Cybertron, transforming at will with the click of a player's thumbstick.

The spirit of the game is old-school. The opening Autobot mission I was shown began with Bumblebee racing down a Cybertron highway, under fire from Decepticons. Fans of the original Transformers cartoon would recognize that homage to the animated series.

There are twists, though. In the Decepticon campaign, Starscream is best friends with Jetfire, neither of them signed up as Decepticons yet. Fans would correctly guess which of them becomes a Megatron follower. Megatron is not a handgun; he's a motorized gun (think tank without a turret). Optimus Prime doesn't have a trailer, though. Sorry. Tieger said the team considered it and it didn't work out. It would have been in the way. Soundwave is a truck. No tapes.

The developers will offer a set variety of Transformers for players to use in the game's chapters. Among them, they can choose three, keeping an eye on classifications: cars, trucks, tanks and jets. The ground vehicles are interesting, because they are hovercrafts. That allows a Bumblebee transformed into a car to tear down a hallway, busting into Decepticons. but also to shift laterally left or right with abrupt precision. Jets can hover or barrel roll, or scream down a passageway. Transforming is meant to be swift, taking about a second and is interruptible if the player inputs shooting commands midway through the transformation (that will speed the transformation even more, I was told).

I was shown a few missions. That first Autobot one featured Optimus, Bumblebee and Ratchet. Players can control any one of them, their online friends dropping in or out to control the others. Each character had ammo-based and cooldown abilities. For Optimus these included a "warcry" that embolden him and his nearby allies to do more damage. The action I saw, a battle against Decepticons, of course, was rich with explosions and action. Transforming allowed for quick maneuvers to the other side of the battle areas. Enemies transformed less, but kept up an energized assault.

The game might seem like Gears of Transformers in screenshots, but there is no cover system. Transforming isn't quite protection, but it's a fine replacement, no? There are turret sequences. I was shown Optimus transforming and integrating himself into a turret, firing from that — and then transforming back and ripping the turret off to use as a weapon, Halo 3 style.

The game looked straightforward, lovely to gaze at for a Transformers fan and impressively action-packed. The demo I was given climaxed with the Decepticon campaign's ending battle with Omega Supreme. I was shown just a brief bit that conveyed the size of this massive Autobot.

This is an action game but also a game about a quest for power and the hope to overcome those whom power corrupts. "Megatron would likely tell you he is the hero of his story," Tieger said. But what Megatron does, what players will witness, will prove the Decepticons to be this saga's bad guys.

High Moon and publisher Activision say that Hasbro was ready for a Transformers fresh start. They are appealing to old-time Transformer fans with this one, though they won't say clearly why they didn't just make a Transformers game using the original models of the original characters. Maybe that's not 21st century enough. But maybe, just as well, this might be a good Transformers game.

A Wii version of the game is also in development but isn't being shown yet. It's being made by Next Level Games, who made last year's Wii revival of Punch-Out.

Note: War for Cybertron will also include a competitive multiplayer mode that Tieger said would please gamers greatly, but no details were offered.

Red Planet

by Karen Moline

And the Oscar as a replacement for best kung-fu, crew-munching moves by a drudge gone
haywire goes to…AMEE, the most nimble (and at worst amusing) expected in
yet another screwed-up mission to Mars,

Red Planet.

It's the year 2050, the over-populated Dirt is connected with to croak, so five macho boys and
one macho girl (Carrie Ann Moss, acting with her buff biceps) unvarying off to
save the world.

You'd think maybe a some more bodies on such an important
expedition would advise with logistics, to reply nothing of relieving
Earth's citizens crack, but that might tax the already thinly
stretched screenwriters' sorely underdeveloped imaginations.

The classic cliche-laden group wings off: the complacent pilot (Benjamin Bratt), the hokey
scientist (Ton Sizemore), the Hip Mature philosopher (Terence Stamp), the
characterless weirdo who you have knowledge of at one’s desire turn bad (Simon Baker) and the
underling hero…in this took place Val Kilmer, as the "space janitor" with
a nerve of gold. While Moss is stuck on the mothership after a solar
flare screws things up, the boys trudge across Mars in search of salvation.

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Several set pieces are truly suspenseful and brilliantly
realized, such as the giant airbag-cushioned docking of the astronauts'
module; AMEE's hyper-kinetic movements; the teeny creatures giving a
surprising bend to the Martian atmosphere; and the macho boys about to
keel one more time and die, thinking they're contest out of the closet of aura. (Anyone who sat
through

The Eyot of Dr. Moreau

will undoubtedly root for Kilmer
to piece the dust.)

Had director Antony Hoffman worked more on the development of these look at characters and stuck with the day in and day out astonishing visuals, and concentrated less on the specialized space jargon mumbo jumbo,

Red Planet

potency arrange been a Red Zinger.

What did you assume of this talking picture? Sound on holiday in the

Movie Forum

.

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Steve Martin has made a mass of funny films, several of them with director Carl Reiner, a very funny man in his own promising; but nil of Martin´s films is any funnier than “All of Me,” his fourth collaboration with Reiner. Continue Lily Tomlin to the coalesce and you view a delightful fantasy comedy, at times a fool out of-far-off-flashy too funny for words. If you´ve never seen it previous to, you´re in for a gift.

Martin plays a bachelor advocate, Roger Cobb, who feels trapped by his workaday essence and his abrasive girlfriend. He longs to play in a jazz border, which he does most evenings, much to the pique of his boss. Enter Edwina Cutwaters (Tomlin), a very wealthy, ill-tempered, bedridden spinster who is about to die and wants to leave her experiences to…herself! She has a cunning plan.

With the help of an Eastern swami named Prahka Lasa (Richard Libertini), she intends upon her passing to transfer her spirit into the body of her stableman´s daughter, thus inheriting a new, healthy pungency while getting to keep all of her bucks. Trouble is, Roger gets in the spirit. He´s there to believe care of the legality of the transference, and by serendipity Edwina´s spunk winds up in his thickness. Neither of them is too exuberant far it.

Martin is hilarious as a man with two identities, each of them vying in the course of limelight. Roger has control of people side of his fullness, Edwina the other. A segment in a men´s room with Roger trying valiantly to get Edwina to purloin him liberate himself is classic. After her character´s undoing early on in the film, Tomlin is seen lock in reflections. Every nevertheless Roger looks in a send back, Edwina is staring back at him. At one point, Martin is even called upon to undertaking the part of Edwina pretending to be Roger. It´s a shiny double twist on the split-character gambit.

The film starts off at a leisurely pace, quickly picks up laughs through the middle, and then gets a narrow-minded silly by the unceasingly, as though the screenwriter wasn´t fully sure how to determine the situation. The body sharing is a premise that wears thin sooner than the flick picture show would like. All the same, the mid wedge is sidesplitting and makes the film benefit watching.

`

MIGHTY JOE YOUNG: Adventure. Starring Bill Paxton and Charlize Theron.
Directed by Ron Underwood. (PG. 114 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

`Mighty Joe Young'' is a tremendous fun movie. The trick? They didn't check free to
out-beast those swelled-headed Ruler Kong and Godzilla franchises. But it's still
a hoot of an enterprise take an overgrown ape having provoke adjusting to
vitality in California.

The 1990s blockbuster movie style calls for mass destruction and
doomsday. But the makers of “Mighty Joe Young'' wisely thought the better
of that — their big ape has plausible proportions and an almost human
warmth and just wants to be left alone in nature. He's powerful, yet a bit
forlorn.

Opening today, “Mighty Joe Young'' is an accomplished remake of a 1949
film, starring Terry Moore and Ben Johnson, that was also fun (visual
effects were by Willis O'Brien and his then-assistant Ray Harryhausen).

Blatantly old-fashioned but skillfully high-tech, the new edition stars
Bill Paxton as macho zoologist Gregg O'Hara and Charlize Theron (“That
Thing You Do!'') as Jill Young, ape lover and friend to big Joe since his
infancy in central Africa.

The story is punctuated by tender moments. A subtext involving the
spirited blond heroine and the ape — while the heartsick zoologist watches
with envy — is a real tickle, but it's done with admirable restraint. With
not much more than vibrant sincerity and a winning smile, Theron turns her
Jill into one of the sexiest screen femmes of the year.
“Mighty Joe Young'' has marvelous special effects. The black, furry clump
of a beast, fleet of foot and sometimes standing almost erect, is a model of
seamless computer graphics and animatronics.

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He looks real and fake at the same time. The duality goes to the heart of
the film — Joe is a bit of a fantasy, like a gigantic stuffed toy, but he's
also a cruel trick of nature. The more you stare at him, the more the
blurring of real and fake becomes a
crazy fascination.

We meet Jill as a little girl witnessing her mother's death at the hands
of poachers outside a jungle research camp. The killing is beastly, to be
sure, and the film's most repellent moment for very young viewers. The main
poacher is the ruthless Strasser (Rade Serbedzija), and Joe, then a toddler,
bites off the villain's trigger finger.

Moving ahead in time, a grown-
up Jill has become Joe's custodian. She's able to communicate with him, and
even play hide-and-seek, and he's essentially her jungle pal. They are two
orphans bonding.

But the threat of poachers, and of intrusive tourists, is ever-present.
The fearless O'Hara stumbles upon the freak ape, and when poachers
return, he talks Jill into moving the big lug to a California wildlife
sanctuary.
Joe arrives in Los Angeles, gets stuck in freeway traffic, escapes when his
big rig overturns and scrambles past the famed Hollywood sign, but is
finally sedated for the trip to his new home. Needless to say, he doesn't
much care for his antiseptic lodgings there.

Beautifully composed scenes show Joe scaling Mann's historic Chinese
Theater while throngs gawk, running from a squad of police helicopters and
using a freeway overpass as cover against their tranquilizer darts. In
another spectacular sequence, Joe climbs a giant amusement park Ferris
wheel.

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This article appeared on page

C - 3

of the San Francisco Chronicle

He's Successfully, But Very recently a Uninterrupted Joe / `Mighty' fun gorilla remake

`RATING: (POLITE APPLAUSE) MIGHTY JOE YOUTHFUL: Danger. Starring Bill Paxton and Charlize Theron. Directed by Ron Underwood. (PG. 114 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.) —————- `Mighty Joe Young'' is a mighty playfully…

Lang’s third venture as a director, which he also scripted. Day in and day out reminiscent of Feuillade in its unhinged figment and tongue-in-cheek frame of mind, it’s a wild and woolly serial approximately a incomprehensible society of arch-criminals who formula (of course) to call the shots the world, and make a start by initiating a quest in behalf of the fabulous past treasure of the Incas. Infernal cruelties, fluttering heroines, and Oriental villains are all welded together in some wonderfully exotic settings by Lang’s unbelievable architectural sense. Two projected beyond instalments were not at all filmed, although Lang had already prearranged the scripts.