Transformers Movie Spoofs Speed Skating Citroen C4 Ad

At my son's urging, we finally watched the Transformers movie last night. At about 1 hour 50 we were treated to Transformer 'Bumblebee' speed skating down a highway. This is the clip they showed on the Oscars, prompting me to yell "Hey! That robot just did a crossover!".

After a little research I realize this is a spoof on the fun British Citroen C4 commercial, rumoured to have used an electrode-laden Nicky Gooch to model the speed skating motions. Gooch is the British Olympic speed skating coach.

From http://www.duncans.tv/2006/citroen-ice-skater

"To develop the human-like moves of the Citroen ice-skating robot, British speed skater Nicky Gooch was filmed on an Olympic-sized skating rink in Sheffield. Automotion Studios used thirty Vicon MX40 cameras set up around the rink."

I am looking forward to seeing this movie again (and if my son has anything to say about it, again and again and again...), to get a closer look at such cg effects as the alien-to-F22 Raptor transformation. There were a lot of quips I missed out on first time around, although I did notice written on the side of one of the cop cars: "to punish and enslave". Funniest line in the movie for me was Optimus Prime's retort "E-Bayyyy", but I can't do the moment justice here - better just to see the movie!

Transformers sound, sound editing and visual effects all earned Oscar nominations.

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