Movieline Ombudsman: Our Official FTC Disclosures About Factors Possibly Impacting Our Coverage

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen: The night before several Movieline staffers were to attend a media screening, director Michael Bay personally messengered over a DVD featuring bikini-clad women in toy voice-changing Optimus Prime helmets sitting on balloons, excitedly yelling "Booooom! Yaaaay!" in their tinny, altered robot-voices each time they were successful in popping one. Eventual Movieline rating for Transformers 2: 6 1/2

Toronto Film Festival, Up in the Air: Though Movieline's Seth Abramovitch and Stu VanAirsdale paid for their own travel and accommodations, they did attend a special Up in the Air VIP "Platinum Club Frequent Flier" lounge, where George Clooney hand-fed both editors sushi while casually discussing director Jason Reitman's Oscar chances. Additionally, both left wearing promotional neck-pillows they would only later discover were stuffed with twenty-dollar bills. (The pillow cases were immediately returned as a totally unnecessary gesture.) Eventual Movieline rating: 8

The Jay Leno Show: NBC's publicity department offered an all-access day touring the Leno set prior to the show's premiere, including a test-drive of an electric Ford Focus around their Green Car Challenge track. When Movieline declined the offer, the host himself showed up at the ML offices the next day, offering to personally shuttle any interested writers over to the set; when that offer was declined, Leno again appeared the following morning, driving back and forth in a jalopy in a menacing fashion, glaring through a pair of comically oversized aviator goggles at the confused staffers watching him from the safety of a third-floor window. He then shouted something about having already paid for a pizza party before finally driving off, angrily shaking a fist. Two days later, Movieline offered a negative assessment of show, which we now disclose may have been affected somewhat by NBC and Leno's unsettling, off-putting generosity.

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