I've figured out what it is about Stephen Sommers' movies that I absolutely despise. It's the fact that at no point in any of his films do I feel like any of what I'm watching is real. And it's not the mummies and the vampires and Sienna Miller's cleavage that make me think that -- it's the way the actors talk to each other, the way the music never stops, and the way that at no point does any character close his mouth. Every last moment is filled with dialogue, which isn't how the world works, and the constant music fills in any scenes they accidentally forgot to record dialogue for. At least Michael Bay had one or two scenes in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen with no music or no dialogue, and it seemed to be entirely on purpose. Meanwhile, Sommers has actually made a movie that may be worse than Van Helsing, which is saying something. Specifically, it's saying that there is no slam-dunk movie idea that Sommers cannot ruin, or at least make enjoyable only by slightly dim children.

Here at MWoP, we've been taking a "wait-and-see-but-don't-hold-your-breath" approach to the G.I. Joe live-action movie. Early on, the visual disparities from the cartoon were pretty jarring, but then, so were the X-Men movie costumes, and that worked out okay. (I'll leave the Transformers movie designs aside, since A. I still don't like them and B. the movies were successful in spite of them, making my opinion moot.) But when the commercials and action scenes started showing up -- including performance-enhancing accelerator suits, which were never part of the G.I. Joe mythos until very recently -- we started to worry a bit more. And now they've declined to screen the movie for the press. But given the fact that negative buzz got so bad at one point that director Stephen Sommers (Van Helsing) was rumored to have been fired, that may be a wise choice. Regardless, it seems there may be nothing to worry about.

The Smurfs live-action movie is officially underway, and we can't wait to see what actors are going to be in it! For Vanity Smurf, they need someone who's pretty, but not too pretty, so that-- what? The Smurfs will all be computer-generated? But... but we just wrote this whole big Smurf cast wish list! Oh, come on! Well, maybe they'll change their minds, and realize that tiny, blue versions of some of today's funniest actors is the way to go. Click here to see who we think should play Papa, Heft, Brainy, Smurfette and the rest of the gang.

The recent announcement that SNL's parody sketch "MacGruber" would be following MacGyver into movie theaters got us thinking about the state of the SNL movie machine. We haven't seen a new SNL sketch-based movie in a while, probably because the last dozen or so have been terrible, but not all of them have been. Some of the earliest ones, like The Blues Brothers and Wayne's World are classics, and even Superstar and The Waterboy are pretty damn funny. So we shouldn't let travesties like The Ladies' Man and It's Pat keep us from getting funny movies based on funny, funny sketches. The formula can still work, dammit! Here's a bunch of sketches we'd like to see feature-length.

Not being a fan of the first Transformers movie (likely due to my impossibly high expectations), I expected more of the same from the second one. I read every negative review, I followed every racism story and I hung on every testicle reaction, and through all of this, I managed to lower my expectations to a level that I had until now thought impossible. Then I actually saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. And, having accepted that the plot would make no sense, and that most of the robots would not be given personalities, and that I was going to have to spend a lot of time at college with Shia LaBeouf, I actually found myself kinda enjoying it. Transformers movie defenders have always told me "you have to turn your brain off," but the closest I managed to get was to give my brain a set of pre-existing conditions -- in this case, that Transformers movies are usually horrible. With this in mind, I was able to sit back and relax, and I can now objectively tell you the ten things that made Transformers: ROTFL better than its predecessor. Warning, spoilers abound!

While all of the attention is on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen right now, this August will see another 1980s toy property come to the big screen: G.I. Joe. Sadly, you may not recognize anything but the name, because visually it seems to have very little in common with the most popular version of its mythos, and unsubstantiated rumors have been circulating that the director, Stephen Sommers, has been pulled from editing the film. How did this happen? How did G.I. Joe, one of the most basic, straightforward concepts in 1980s children's television, become such a nightmare?

It's a well-known fact to anyone within earshot of my office that I didn't like the first Transformers movie. In addition to an apparent hatred of the original cartoon, I thought it showed a hatred of humanity, from the robot characters' utter disregard for human lives to the human characters' lack of anything resembling real emotion to, yes, the peeing-on-John-Turturro incident. (No, I will not let it go. John Turturro is a national treasure.) So seeing all of the cool-looking new robots in the trailer for Revenge of the Fallen (Devastator! Ravage! The Fallen!) has my insides churning like Devastator's sand-hole. Could it possibly be good, thereby redeeming the original film and, in fact, the entire Michael Bay film library in my eyes? Doubtful. But the robots certainly look awesome. We gathered as much information as we could about the new robots and got some updates on the four returning primaries for a gallery we like to call Robot Roll Call! Check it out here, and let us know what you think of the movie below.

They turned Transformers into a movie franchise; they turned Land of the Lost into a movie; they're turning Thundercats, Where's Waldo? and Stretch Armstrong into movies. Clearly, these things are just going to keep happening. Every single thing you remember from a past decade will be announced as a movie sooner or later. Slap wraps will be a movie. Girl Talk: The Next Zit Sticker will be a movie. Crystal Pepsi will be a movie. And you know what? I surrender! We might as well start preemptively embracing these things and hoping for the best before they're announced -- it lessens the blow that way. Here are five kid's shows you liked when you were younger that will inevitably be adapted into live action films, as well as some casting suggestions that we can hopefully all live with.

For all of you Buffy fans out there, your wildest dreams are about to come true... and it's your worst nightmare. The director and producer of the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie are getting ready to relaunch the franchise minus Angel, Willow, Xander, Spike and (believe it or not) Joss Whedon. The new film would have no connection to the TV series, to avoid trampling on Whedon's vision, and would be darker, event-sized and, they hope, franchise-worthy. They've even teamed up with Asian-horror remake king Roy Lee (The Grudge, The Ring, The Eye, The Strangers) to make sure it has the appropriately creepy (and, apparently, Asian) vibe. While I love Joss Whedon, I also love the idea of a teenage girl killing vampires, so I'd be happy to see someone try a new take on Buffy... as long as it's my take. Here's my helpful (mandatory) guide to how they should do it.

The Interweb is all abuzz today with news of a Father Knows Best movie in the works at Fox/New Regency. Will the new script dissect the show's oft-criticized paternalism, or skew its overly-rosy view of American life? Nope -- it's going to have a wacky grandpa! Apparently the original plot is going by the wayside in favor of a new dad fighting with his more conservative, live-in father over parenting style, which sounds just hilarious. After all, it's easy to remake these classic TV shows as movies, right? Hmmm... Read on to relive the worst '50-'60s TV reboots ever to appear on the silver screen, and take a gander at some remake ideas we'd rather sit through...