Hark­ing back to the orig­i­nal theme tune, Cheap Trick have recorded a recre­ation of the 1980s “Trans­form­ers, trans­form­ers, more than meets the eye” num­ber. It has lov­ingly been placed on YouTube for us to enjoy in all its cheesy glory:

To aug­ment this, here’s the final track­list for the Revenge of the Fallen score. The titles leave lit­tle to the imagination.

1. Prime
2. Einstein’s Wrong
3. NEST [Con­tains instru­men­tal excerpt from “New Divide”]
4. The Shard
5. The Fallen
6. Infi­nite White
7. Heed Our Warn­ing
8. The Fallen’s Arrival
9. Tomb Of The Primes
10. For­est Bat­tle
11. Pre­cious Cargo
12. Matrix Of Lead­er­ship
13. I Claim Your Sun
14. I Rise, You Fall

A two part review of the Bum­ble­bee fig­ure that comes with its own Sam Witwicky fig­ure. The videos detail the trans­for­ma­tion in painstak­ing detail. Thanks to YouTube user lilbrooksy911.

Two Ger­man dubbed clips have sur­faced online, trans­la­tions are wel­comed. The first of these fea­tures Wheelie sneak­ing about, before being caught on a mouse trap and alert­ing Mikaela’s atten­tion who comes to deal with him. Thanks Randy.

The sec­ond shows footage prior to Scavenger’s trans­for­ma­tion, once again in Ger­man — heli­copter flight in to Beth­le­hem Steel, sol­diers prepar­ing for bat­tle, before the robot emerges and the action commences.

First up, some more footage from the Trans­form­ers 2 world pre­mière in Tokyo, thanks to Marc via Para­mount Pic­tures. These pre­views have been very nicely edited together:

This sec­ond video shows us clips from the press con­fer­ence and the prepa­ra­tion work for the première:

Next up, the Trans­form­ers 2 cast were in Seoul, South Korea for the next première.

Revenge of the Fallen delays Harry Pot­ter IMAX run

The Harry Pot­ter 6 IMAX release will be delayed by two weeks to July 29th in light of Trans­form­ers 2’s IMAX run. Harry Pot­ter and the Half Blood Prince will be released on July 15th. This is a result of Warner Bros. chang­ing HP6 from a Christ­mas to a Sum­mer movie, over­look­ing the four week Trans­form­ers lock in.

Aprilia RSV 1000 R debut

An Aprilia motor­cy­cle, dressed in Trans­form­ers gear, and one that matches the one that Mikaela (Megan Fox) rides, has debuted at Road Amer­ica. Thanks Kim.

GMC Top­kick discontinued

Gen­eral Motors are report­edly stop­ping pro­duc­tion of the GMC Top­kick model, aka our friend Ironhide.

Michael Bay as an M&M

Michael Bay has been car­i­ca­tured as an M&M against a back drop of Prime fight­ing The Fallen. There is a great like­ness here, though I’m not sure why a fem­i­nine pur­ple M&M was chosen.

UK Trans­form­ers 2 contests

Para­mount Pic­tures in the UK are offer­ing up goodie bags, copies of the score and sound­track and more excit­ingly, tick­ets to the pre­mière on June 15th. View con­tests

Revenge of the Fallen score cover

The cover for the score has been revealed, noth­ing too rad­i­cal, a closeup shot of Opti­mus Prime. Pur­chase the score from Amazon

Mak­ing of ‘New Divide’ video

How many videos about a song can you make? Here’s another Linkin Park mak­ing of video, New Divide fea­tures in Trans­form­ers 2.

Here’s Mickey Rourke in full Whiplash cos­tume. Click the image for a high res version.

Whiplash (Mickey Rourke) sports a power pack on his chest that looks sim­i­lar to the one that Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) uses.

“The tech­nolo­gies are def­i­nitely related,” says direc­tor Jon Favreau. “That’s part of the core theme of the film.”

The villain’s alter ego, Ivan Vanko, is a Russ­ian who “has con­structed his own ver­sion of a suit,” Favreau says. Among the cre­ative inno­va­tions: a pair of whips, pow­ered by the suit’s glow­ing chest piece, that are expected to keep Iron Man cracking.

This first image of the char­ac­ter shows Whiplash mak­ing an appear­ance at the Monaco His­toric Grand Prix. Favreau as usual is tight-lipped about plot points and declines to dis­cuss whether the big-screen Whiplash is, as in the Mar­vel Comics, a weapons designer who works for Justin Ham­mer (Sam Rock­well), a com­peti­tor of Tony Stark/Iron Man.

“We like to play into and against the expec­ta­tions that peo­ple might have, so we mixed it up a bit,” Favreau says.

Rourke’s per­for­mances in Sin City and The Wrestler helped con­vince the direc­tor that the actor was the best can­di­date to face Downey in his sequel to last spring’s block­buster that grossed $318.4 million.

“It was very impor­tant that the vil­lain be as com­pelling as can be. … Once I thought of Mickey in that role, it made me under­stand how to shape the story.”

(Thanks Leroy!)

Speak­ing with The Guardian, Rourke men­tions how he learned a lit­tle Russ­ian for his role:

And Iron Man 2, in which he plays Tony Stark’s tat­tooed Russ­ian neme­sis, Ivan, is pos­si­bly the biggest movie yet in Rourke’s new career. For Rourke this means going to Rus­sia, drink­ing vodka and vis­it­ing jails to study prison tat­toos and find his character’s tics. “I decided to do half my role in Russ­ian,” he beams, “and that’s hard because the Russ­ian lan­guage doesn’t roll off the English-speaking tongue very eas­ily. I spent three hours a day with a teacher, and after two weeks I know four sen­tences! Let me see, it’s sort of like… ‘Yez­za­mee menya… Yez­za­mee manya obott… Er, nema­boootty menya…’”

This goes on for quite some time. “It means,” he says, finally, “If some­one kills me, don’t wake me up, because I’d rather be dead than live in your world.”

But the land of block­buster movies is not some­where Rourke plans to stay long. “I’m not gonna rush out and see the next Bat­man, I’m not big on for­mula movies. I don’t like all that Spider-Man shit.”

Con­tin­u­ing on from the recent Kevin Feige rev­e­la­tions, First Show­ing have pro­vided a sec­ond com­men­tary of the event, which offers up some more details of these three movies.

Iron Man 2

In the first movie the film mak­ers man­aged to get the tone just right, for the sequel they are look­ing to add char­ac­ters and up the action whilst main­tain­ing this tone — keep­ing the right sense of humour. Film­ing is half way through and the major­ity of the spo­ken parts are com­plete, the next six weeks shall be ded­i­cated to action scenes!

Thor

There will be no Shake­spearean dia­logue in the Thor movie, despite its usage in the comics. Some scenes will take place in Asgard.

Cap­tain America

The first avenger movie shall be a period piece, set pre­dom­i­nantly dur­ing WWII. It is hoped that the movie can cap­ture a feel­ing sim­i­lar to Raiders of the Lost Ark, with the same lev­els of fun. Side­kick Bucky (wiki) will also make an appear­ance, in some capacity.

As for direc­tor Joe Johnston,

A lit­tle bit of The Rock­e­teer, lots of Octo­ber Sky, and a lit­tle bit of the ship designs that John­ston did for Star Wars, allud­ing to how this is the per­fect movie for him to direct. “It’s the movie his entire career has been lead­ing towards.”