Saw it last night. Thoughts, in no particular order:

(1) Overall, the movie is a mess. A glorious, amazing mess. I don’t think I could recapitulate the plot for you because it made almost no sense. Enormous chunks of the story are either preposterous, contradictory, or completely unnecessary. Of the three main groups of humans the story follows, you could have cut one of them out entirely (the plucky NSA analysts) and missed absolutely nothing.

Many of the action sequences are basically incomprehensible. Also, the dialogue is laughable more often than not. And Michael Bay has grounded the movie so deeply in the present–jokes about Armageddon, references to eBay–that there is little chance of it holding up a decade from now the way, say, Jurassic Park does.

(2) All of that said, I spent the entire 144 minutes basically in the same state Sean William Scott is in here, after Frank the Tank tranqs himself (at the 1:43 mark):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CqfZfFn33Y]

In short, I haven’t been this emotionally, physically, and spiritually satisfied by a summer movie in a very long while.

(3) Why? Well, there’s the visceral thrill of seeing Optimus Prime–even an Optimus Prime with flames–transforming for the first time. But most of the movie’s charms defy explanation. Either you’ll be delighted by giant robots fighting in the street and turning into cars, planes, helicopters, and tanks, or you won’t.

(4) However, even if you don’t dig Transformers, there’s much to appreciate. For one thing, Transformers serves as a giant advertisement for the F-22. For another, it’s very satisfying to know that while Decepticons are awesome killing machines, the main cannon on an A-10 shreds them like hot BB’s through a stick of butter.

And then there’s this: Transformers is the first movie I’ve ever seen to show a Spectre Gunship in action. If that doesn’t make it move, you might already be dead.

(5) While I loved Transformers, in Japan this movie might just be Citizen Kane.

Other random observations:

* The unnamed boom-box Decepticon seems clearly modeled on Sebulba.

* The Decepticon side of their home planet looks suspiciously like post-betrayal Isengard.

* In a triumph of product placement, this movie made me really, really want the new Camaro. True story.

* There are so many bit parts filled by Law & Order veterans that I found myself almost a distracted by them. For instance, the fellow who played Anthony Anderson’s brother was also the victim on the SVU episode in which Anderson appeared as a detective.

* John Turturro’s slightly gonzo MIB routine is totally out of place and yet highly amusing.

* Is Shia LaBeouf the new Wes Bentley or the new Josh Hartnett? Just asking.

Update: Now that I have some distance, it occurs to me that Transformers is actually important in that it does something that’s never been done before–it is not just critic-proof, it is judgment proof. Michael Bay has created a work which simply cannot be held to any sort of standard: artistic, logical, moral, critical. He has made a movie which simply is. This is the Holy Grail of modern moviemaking, I think. It’s Hollywood’s version of a perpetual motion machine.

AICN’s Vern tries valiantly to hold Transformers to some objective standard, but in the end I think he fails:

[Bay] is obsessed with sports cars and has never felt a human emotion, how could you do better than hiring him to make a huge expensive movie where the main characters are cars? It’s like God made up The Transformers just to get some use out of Michael Bay.

But Michael Bay told God to fuck off, and he went and made a movie about people. After that opening attack you get literally an hour of kiddie movie horse shit about Shia LeBeouf being a nerd and trying to hit on the adult car mechanic Maxim cover girl with a troubled past from his high school.

I may have mentioned in the past that I’m not the biggest fan of the Williams sisters. Neither of them plays particularly beautiful tennis (although they’re both much more complete players than they were even four years ago) and while Venus seems kind of sweet, in her way, Serena seems . . . how to put this? . . . less so.

Which brings us to yesterday’s seven-hour (with rain delays) affair. Serena was playing the over-matched Daniela Hantuchova (Galley Friend M.G. refers to her as Hotuchova, see below), winning the first set handily. Late in the second set, Serena suffered a ghastly muscle cramp in her calve–you could see the muscle bulging out and when she initially started whacking at it with her racket to try to break the cramp it made me a little queasy. That’s painful stuff.

After an injury timeout, Serena stumbled through the end of the set, losing it. After rain delays, they came back for the third and Serena, improbably, steamrolled Hantuchova. Along the way, she limped a lot. But she moved pretty well when she had to. At one point, she made a big stink about needing a bathroom break before a Hantuchova service game. Per the rules, her request was denied. After the game, the umpire asked if she needed the loo. Miraculously, she did not.

But what struck me through all of this is that Hantuchova only drop-shotted Serena once, rarely hit wide, spinning serves, and, in general, played as if she didn’t quite know what to do with a seemingly injured opponent. Give her high marks for sportsmanship, even with Serena grunting and screaming and Richard Williams jumping around in the players’ box like a crazed soccer fan.

All of which is prelude to the following question: The top rank of current women’s players are a particularly ruthless lot: Serena, Venus, Sharapova, Henin. They employ all sorts of gamesmanship, they show none of the quarter that Hantuchova displayed against Serena, and they almost never look like they’re having fun. Why is that?

You don’t see that among the top men’s players, where Federer, Rafa, Roddick, and most of the elites display the normal balance of anguish, frustration, and euphoria. (There are exceptions: see Hewitt, Leyton.) You certainly didn’t see that among the last crop of great women–Hingis, Clijsters, Davenport. I wonder what’s in the air in the women’s locker room these days.

Whatever it is, I wish it would go away. Sports aren’t fun to watch if you get the sense that the players aren’t having fun. Not everything is snakes and ladders, of course and I admire competitive drive as much as the next guy. But even Federer and Sampras gave you wry smiles every once in a while on court, as if to say, “Hey, can you believe that?”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Maria Sharapova smile during a match. Ditto for Serena. The only time Justine Henin smiles is when she’s trying to get away with something. Dourness is not–or at least should not be–a prerequisite for success. There will always be Thomas Muster’s in the game, but the top players should be better than that.

Like everyone else, I’m re-reading Half-Blood Prince in order to prepare myself for Deathly Hallows and now come two other bits of prognostication.

First, the Soccer Dad maps out the Rowling Uncertainty Principle.

Then, GS Reader C.C. sends us this link to the famed Hogwarts Professor, who makes the mind-blowing case for an Evil Snape (meaning that Snape is a quadruple, not triple, agent; I think).

Those of you who have followed the Hogwarts Professor and his very convincing theories on literary alchemy may recall that he was previously a proponent of the Good Snape. But this scholarly dissection–it runs thousands of words–has me re-examining everything I thought I knew from Half-Blood Prince:

My reason for taking the Evil!Snape position more seriously than I have or than I ever expected to is Ms. Rowling’s fascination with the Italian Renaissance. If this fascination is not news to you, forgive me if I review it here for readers who may have missed it. In brief, the magic of Ms. Rowling’s world is the Hermetic magic of the Italian Renaissance. . . .

* The “good” centaur in the Harry Potter books is named “Firenze.” Firenze is the Italian word for the city of Florence, arguably the center and heart of the 15th Century renaissance of arts and sciences in Northern Italy. Firenze the Centaur is an accomplished astrologer, and, unlike the herd in the Forbidden Forest, he believes that his art does not reveal what must come to pass so everyone should step aside and “let it happen.” Firenze argues with Bane and others what is essentially the humanist “free will” position of Albus Dumbledore that “what is foretold” reveals the playing field of choice. [Friends of Narnia will see Ms. Rowling’s tip of the hat here to Roonwit the Centaur’s final words in The Last Battle.]

* Maybe you don’t like Firenze or the Centaurs. How about Buckbeak the Hippogriff? Ms. Rowling lifts this magical animal right out of Ariosto’s early 16th century epic Orlando Furioso, which is in many ways the completion of Matteo Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato of the late 15th century. Both writers are from Emilio and Ferrara. Hippogriffs are the heroic steeds of Italian Renaissance fantasy epic.

* Ms. Rowling said in 1997 that “To invent this wizard world I’ve learned a ridiculous amount about alchemy… to set the parameters and establish the stories’ internal logic.” If you’ve read Unlocking Harry Potter: Five Keys for the Serious Reader (and if you haven’t, you really should), you understand at no little depth how literary alchemy is the skeleton on which Ms. Rowling has built her stories. This is a pointer to Florence and the Renaissance because alchemy, as a Hermetic art, owes its Western rebirth (or better, “second wind”) in the 15th Century to Ficino’s translation at the direction and expense of the Medici of Hermes Trismegistus. Alchemy is a cornerstone of Renaissance magic. . . .

* The Italian Renaissance is largely about the relations between the four Principal Cities of the Peninsula: Florence, Naples, Venice, and Milan. Their inability to get along or even co-operate in shared emergencies leads to their subjection to France (Charles VIII, Louis XII) and Spain (Ferdinand of Aragon). “Four rivals in division being vulnerable to takeover” sound familiar? I suspect, too, that one of the spurs to Ms. Rowling’s creation of Quidditch as experienced at Hogwarts was the Palio di Siena. Though it is now a competition between 17 different sections of the city, these passionate horse races, according to Titus Birckhardt in his book on Siena, were originally between the principal four quarters of the city.

* And, while that mention of Titus Burckhardt is still fresh, two notes. Is it odd that this author of the best book on alchemy in print, though Swiss, was born in Florence and wrote at length about Siena? And that, to University historians at least, the name “Burckhardt” means Jakob Burckhardt, the author of The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, and great uncle of Titus? What I wouldn’t give for a peek at Ms. Rowling’s bookshelf. I’m guessing that her copy of Burckhardt’s Alchemy is the one with the Hagrid Hermaphrodite on a dragon straddling a Golden Snitch and that it sits right right next to Frances Yates’ books on Renaissance magic and Jacob Burckhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy.

* There’s more. All the references in the books to specific stars (Sirius, Regulus, etc.) and the importance of astrology both in Divinations and with the Centaurs are pointers again to Renaissance memory-based magic, in which astrology plays a huge part. The Tarot? Again, whether you’re talking about their origins as playing cards or their occult usage, you wind up in 15th Century Italy (specifically, Milan). Remember Boiardo, the hippogriff guy? He wrote a poem on Tarot cards as well.

Ms. Rowling’s magical world, like it or not, is an echo of the hermetic magic and heroic literature of Renaissance Italy. . . .

A little over a month ago I received a letter and essay from a serious reader of Harry Potter named Sally Palmer. She wrote in a very flattering note that she thought I was way off in my arguments that Severus Snape is a Dumbledore man. Ms. Palmer shared a few links to help make her case that the Potions genius is a relativist and power seeker. The links were to essays on The Leaky Cauldron and on MuggleNet that explored Severus Snape in light of Niccolo Machiavelli’s political treatise The Prince.

The case builds from there. Read at your own peril. I loved Snape the minute he called Harry “our new celebrity,” but for the first time I’m now wondering that he might be evil.

I’ve been very much digging the Buffy Season 8 comics, so you can only imagine how surprised and gratified I was to see Dark Horse editor Scott Allie throw out a link on his blog to the little Serenity Tales strip I did with Mike Russell and Bill Mudron, Beginner’s Luck:

I’m going tonight and, despite myself, I’m kind of psyched. But I make this solemn vow: If any Dinobots show up on the screen, I walk out of the theater.

Conversely, should there be Constructicons I may stay for a second showing. The Wershovenist Pig was, as usual, the first person I knew to have all five (six?) of them, and when formed them up into the Super-Duper Mega Constructicon–or whatever it was called–it was like a new awakening of coolness. Easily the best day of high school.

To tide you over until showtime, here’s a Transformers clip that’s been sort of Fun With Real Audio-ed, Robert Smigel stizz.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq1_6D9QS9Y]

Writing about Benoit and the future of wrestling last week, I said that it wouldn’t surprise me if this was the end of the line for the WWE, the McMahon family, or maybe even pro wrestling as we know it. Here’s a piece I wrote making the case for the necessity of a pro wrestler’s union.

I know, it sounds crazy. But have a look at this outstanding USA Today piece. Between 1997 and 2004, USA Today found that:

about 1,000 wrestlers 45 and younger have worked on pro wrestling circuits worldwide, wrestling officials estimate.

USA TODAY’s examination of medical documents, autopsies and police reports, along with interviews with family members and news accounts, shows that at least 65 wrestlers died in that time . . .

Wrestlers have death rates about seven times higher than the general U.S. population, says Keith Pinckard, a medical examiner in Dallas who has followed wrestling fatalities. They are 12 times more likely to die from heart disease than other Americans 25 to 44, he adds. And USA TODAY research shows that wrestlers are about 20 times more likely to die before 45 than are pro football players, another profession that’s exceptionally hard on the body.

I suspect that if the NHL, NBA, or NFL had death rates like that, Congress would shut them down in a blink. But if pro wrestling is protected from such scrutiny precisely because it isn’t a sport, then the least they can do is have a union to improve working conditions and protect the wrestlers. Even Broadway actors have Equity.

In the WSJ Jennifer Graham gives us a wonderful observation about the problems posed by the new Nancy Drew’s age:

In the classic series of books that peaked during the Eisenhower administration, Miss Drew was a young woman, either 16 or 18 years old, depending on the driving laws of the time. She had already stepped out of the pimply pool of seething neuroses that we call high school, and dwelled, unencumbered by a day job, in an orderly world where your housekeeper prepared the meals and tweedy new clothes were charged to your father’s account at the local department store. The old Nancy was so mature that the actress who portrayed her on television in the 1970s posed for Playboy. If the new Nancy Drew did that, child pornography laws would have been broken.

The 56 mysteries that made up the original Nancy Drew series, published by Grosset & Dunlap, were sparsely illustrated. But the covers and crude sketches within showed a smartly dressed young woman with classic clothes and a demure, almost matronly, hair style. The reader is told that she is a teenager, but given her demeanor and skill set (Nancy can handle a gun, change a tire, fly a plane, sew a dress and perform water ballet), she transcended the indignities of adolescence and always seemed old enough to drink (not that our heroine ever would).

The Nancy in the Warner Bros. movie, disappointingly, is just a girl. She attends high school and hangs with a puerile, wisecracking 12-year-old. She bribes thieves and clerks with homemade baked goods and carries a “sleuthing kit,” no doubt coming soon to a Wal-Mart near you. Approaching cheesiness, she is a caricature of the adolescent overachiever, a girl who outruns her peers on the high-school track with a Peter Pan collar and exaggerated steps; who builds the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in shop class, saying “I only had time for 12 flying buttresses–in actuality there are 26.”

Baby boomer mothers who take their daughters to the film expecting the classy heroine of their youth will find instead a 99-minute mockumentary of what Martha Stewart must have been like as a tweener.

Read the rest. Graham has a deep insight into why the filmmakers had to do it this way.

Big night last night. Great draft. Couple of franchise players in the mix. And the Philadelphia ’76ers were wheeling and dealing!

The 7-foot, 240-pound Smith played three years for the Rams, and is also known as a good athlete. . . .

With the 30th overall pick, the Sixers selected 19-year-old Finnish guard Petteri Koponen. They later traded Koponen to Portland for the 42nd overall pick and cash.

The Sixers already had the 38th overall pick, and used it on Ukranian center Kyrylo Fesenko. Right at the end of the night, though, the Sixers traded Fesenko to Utah for the rights to the 55th overall pick, Providence center Herbert Hill. . . .

When the 42nd pick came around, Portland took 6-foot-7, 220-pound Vanderbilt guard Derrick Byars on the Sixers’ behalf.

Forget movement for movement’s sake–that’s how you build a dynasty!