I have to cover news, and sadly, not every story can be puppy dogs and ice cream and Zac Efron getting peed on. This one is much less fun. You may remember Transformers 3 extra Gabriela Cedillo, who was left with brain injuries after an accident on set. Her family sued Paramount, and now the LA Times is reporting that she received an $18.5 million settlement.

Gabriela Cedillo, 26, was driving a car in a background scene when she was struck in the head by a stunt vehicle that broke lose from a cable during filming.
The accident on Sept. 1, 2010, left Cedillo with permanent brain injuries. The Chicago resident had a portion of her skull removed and suffers from memory problems, seizures and is blind in one eye, according to her attorneys.
Cedillo sued Paramount Pictures in October 2010 alleging that the accident was negligently caused by a poor welding job and that Paramount had reneged on an agreement to cover medical costs. This week a Cook County judge approved the settlement.
“They led everyone to believe they were going to take care of her medical bills. They didn’t and she was forced onto a public aid,” Todd Smith, a Chicago attorney who represented Cedillo, said in an interview. “While they make their billions of dollars in gross revenue from the movie, taxpayers are paying medical bills for her.” [LA Times]

The woman, now 26, has permanent brain impairment.  “She lost about a third of the top of her head,” Smith said. Her initial bills totaled $350,000 in 2010. [NBCChicago]

A source tells Deadline that the lawsuit filed in October 2010 would have gone on longer if Michael Bay’s name hadn’t been thrown into the legal mix. But the possibility that the director and his Platinum Dunes production company suddenly were to be pulled in as defendants apparently lit a fire under Paramount to speed a settlement. Today’s news comes after a year and a half of legal maneuvering, including attempts by the studio to move the case from Illinois to California, as well one already failed mediation. Then Paramount approached Cedillo’s attorneys early this year seeking a second mediation. It took just a couple more meetings between the lawyers for the settlement to be reached in late March. [Deadline]

You’d hope with a movie that grosses more than a billion dollars worldwide that you wouldn’t have to sue the studio to get a big settlement out of them for lopping off part of someone’s head, but hey, I guess lawyers gotta eat.

The folks over at Movies.com have compiled a list of this summer’s ten highest-grossing movies, and… guess which one’s at the top. Go ahead, guess. I’ll give you a hint, it’s a movie so nuanced and complex that I wrote it a three-word review.

1. Transformers: Dark of the Moon ($338.8 million) *** (Ranked 3rd Worldwide)

2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (325.1 million) *** (Ranked 2nd Worldwide)

3. The Hangover Part II ($253 million)

4. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides ($238.4 million) *** (Ranked 1st Worldwide)

5. Fast Five ($209.4 million)

6. Cars 2 ($182.4 million)

7. Thor ($180.6 million)

8. Bridesmaids ($165.5 million)

9. Kung Fu Panda 2 ($161.8 million)

10. X-Men: First Class ($144.7 million);

*Note: This list represents domestic totals only.

***Over $1 billion worldwide

You may notice that Fast Five came out in April, and Pirates and Hangover II in May, so I guess EQUINOXES MEAN NOTHING TO PEOPLE ANYMORE. To break it down even further, the list includes a third installment, an eighth installment, a second installment, a fourth installment, a fifth installment, another second installment, a comic book movie, a second installment, and a fourth installment/prequel/reboot, with Bridesmaids the only non-sequel, non-comic-book-movie of the bunch. Boy is that depressing. And yet X-Men, which is both, was by far the best movie of the bunch. Oh well. Also, Pirates is the number one movie internationally, because, as I’ve pointed out, foreigners love Johnny Depp.

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The whole crew was back for this week’s Frotcast, which included NOT ONE BUT TWO guests. Lindy West came on to read hard-boiled Twitter fiction from DrunkExpatWriter (you may remember him from last week?). The secret ingredient to his work is “anal rape.” We also brought on all-star commenter and Twitter impresario Pauly Dangerously to play the UFC Special Skills game. You know how before every UFC fight they put up a graphic with three bullet points showing a fighter’s special skills?  Stuff like “Heavy hands,” “College wrestler,” etc.? We all made lists of UFC Special Skills we’d like to see.  Things like “Crazy ‘Bout Elvis,” “Believes in Jesus,” “Loves to laugh,” “Does great Christopher Walken,” and my favorite, which was Brendan’s, “Yells out what he’s about to do.”

Email us at Frotcast@Gmail.com, Subscribe on iTunes, and download this week’s episode here (right-click, “save as.”) We’d love to hear your hard-boiled twit fic submissions, UFC Special Skills, and ESPECIALLY ideas for new games. Episode notes and time stamps:

• 3:44 – Discussing Food Network’s new I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-satire show, EXTREME CHEF!!! (promo after the jump)
• 7:55 – Brendan’s idea for an Oregon Trail reality show
• 14:42 – Email from reader Zach, “Poop Transplant Round Table.”
• 20:40 – The UFC Special Skills Game with Pauly
• 37:22 – Hard-boiled Twitter Fiction with Lindy West. (*finger snaps*)  SUBMIT YOUR OWN!
• 47:00 – Talking Transformers 3, which Ben liked, because he is a child. I posit that there are two types of human characters in Transformers, “zombies” and “Daffy Ducks.”
• 1:04:00 – The biggest movie flops of 2011.  Can you guess them?
• 1:15:00 – My stories about working on infomercials, including the bodybuilder from the Ab Scissor commercial who measured his pee in measuring cups to keep track of liquid intake.

Fantasy Box Office Standings and Extreme Chef “Sizzle Reel” below…

Read the rest of this entry »

This video racked up 1.7 million views while I was on vacation, so there’s a decent chance you’ve already seen it. Those of you who have can humor the rest of us while we catch up. Basically, a sharp-eyed YouTube user named Jermain Odreman found a few shots from The Island that were remarkably similar to shots from Transformers 3. And by remarkably similar, I mean they were the same footage with different CGI added. As you can see above, they’re either the same shot or Bay took great pains to replicate scenes from his least successful movie. People reacted as if this was finally the damning evidence against Michael Bay that we needed. Said one YouTube commenter:

“In the age of advanced CGI, it’s really sad to recycle scenes from movies made 6 years ago.”

Really?  Is it?  I would say advanced CGI made that possible.  And *I* had to watch the clip two or three times before I could determine which parts were actually the same, so I doubt your average Michael Bay fan with a propeller beanie and chocolate all over his face is going to drop his giant lollipop and demand a refund in the middle of the film.  As far as things they did to increase Transformers‘ profit margins, I’d be less worried about re-using a half-second car stunt than about them basically sticking an infomercial for Mercedes in the middle of the movie.  Or how about when they illustrate the leaning office building with a closeup on a the liquid level of a Bushmills bottle (because obviously racks of whiskey bottles are everywhere in an OFFICE BUILDING)?  Get over it. “Using the same shot with different CGI added” is as perfect a metaphor for Michael Bay’s entire career as you’re going to get.

I couldn’t make my Monday night press screening for Transformers: Dark of the Moon, but knowing it would probably be the biggest movie of the summer, I went to see it on my own dime the first chance I got.  I knew I owed it to you to at least attempt to answer all your burning questions.  Is there robot heaven in this one? Is Rosie Whatsername-McHyphen as good at looking hot as Megan Fox? And for the love of God, man, what of Josh Duhamel and the Flying Squirrel Team? That was the plan.  So then I saw it Wednesday night.  But when I sat down to write my review, I was overcome with apathy. So far all I’ve got is:

“Transformers is long.”

…To be continued.  (…but probably not).