Welles was not the only famous talent to lend his voice to "Transformers: The Movie." He was joined by Eric Idle ("Monty Python"), Leonard Nimoy ("Star Trek"), Judd Nelson ("The Breakfast Club") and Robert Stack ("Unsolved Mysteries"). In this way, "Transformers: The Movie" presaged a contemporary commonplace: cartoons voiced by stars. Today, an animated film wouldn't dream of not casting well-known performers.

Talk about a DREAM cast!

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Robert Stack as the voice of Ultra Magnus, by the way, is hilarious. Idle's the fasttalkinggarbagerobot who bangs around to "Dare To Be Stupid."

Oh, and it was also Scatman Crothers' final role.

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Oh, and it was also Scatman Crothers' final role.

Before being axed to death by Jack Nicholson.

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but.... what if i already *had* a beverage when i read this? (and a tall refreshing frosty beverage, at that!)

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Get another one! And have one for me! All's I got in the office is tea and orange-mango juice.

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Does anybody know if Saltshaker makes it into the movie? That would so rock.

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Holy shit! I'd forgotten about brunching.

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The beverage didn't help.

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I didn't see the Transformers film until much later, so when the new series of cartoons started I had no idea what the heck was going on.

On the other hand, the later series did give us an episode where Grimlock saves the universe by being incredibly stupid. That was pretty awesome.

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I've added you to my friends list because your userpic rules so friggin' hard.

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Mr. GFB rules as much as his userpic, so you're in good company.

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At least they looked like giant toy robots oughtta, in the first movie. I doubt I'll see the new one outside of the trailer, where the title characters appear to be large anthropomorphic balls of crumpled tinfoil flyin' around. The price you pay for realism!

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I can't get over the last of the "Story Highlights" for this article:

• Biographer says Welles still man who made "Citizen Kane"

I'm going to need to see some sources that back up this claim.

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(read it again)

I know what the biographer meant by that ("he's still the genius who made Kane even if he's a bit more corpulent and word-slurry") but there had been some controversy over who actually wrote the screenplay. Herman Mankiewicz is traditionally considered the one who wrote the bulk of the screenplay, consulting with Welles on it, but in later years Orson would make various claims that he wrote the whole durn thing himself.

Welles had a tendency in later years to accidentally on purpose fudge facts around so that stories of his past sounded better. For example, in various interviews from the 1960s until his death, he'd alternately admit or deny that he deliberately planned his War of the Worlds radio broadcast as a hoax. Depended on who was interviewing him, his mood, and how he thought history should have been portrayed at that point, I guess.

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Every time I watch that I get to the part where he goes "It's fermented in the bot-tle" and I always holler "SO ARE YOU!"

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Those two on the left are consummate professionals. You can just tell they're dying inside and yet, every take, every setup, they go right back to seriously fiddling with the foil on the bottle.

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