So I saw Star Trek a week ago and I guess I’m ready to write about the experience.  On the Reviewer’s Scale of Re-Imaginings and Re-Boots, Star Trek falls somewhere between Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Peter Jackson’s King Kong.  It doesn’t ruin fond memories of my childhood, but it doesn’t quite make me wish I was a kid again so I could be terrified by a whole new breed of bugs.  I left the movie without feeling ripped off, but still slightly annoyed that some people will go so far in some aspects of film-making and skimp so badly on others of equal importance.

The movie looks fantastic.  The sets and ships and cgi looks pretty damn great.  Everything looks cool, but not always Star Trek-y.  The production felt very much like someone had been watching a lot of Enterprise and other Trek series, and then remembered some cool stuff from Battlestar Galactica (new series).  For example, the phasers look very similar to the original series, but behave like a lot of the weapons in Enterprise, retaining a sort of functional mechanization to the prop itself.  There are tons of aliens seamlessly, and heedlessly, thrown into the backgrounds and foregrounds of crowd scenes.

The plot is not bad, by Star Trek standards.  That caveat is important because a viewer needs to remember that Trek does certain things in its Trek way and these things can be totally dumb in any other setting but Trek always makes it seem ok.  Like time travel.  Or God-like beings living in the center of the galaxy.  Or reincarnation through proto-matter.  Or Nazis on other planets.  Or any of the other goofy things that would never fly in Babylon 5 or Firefly or etc, etc, etc.  So when I say the plot is not bad, I mean the sequence of events that together contribute to the telling of a story works and is entertaining.

The weak points were almost minor enough, but still silly.  Every time you saw an experienced Captain, the guy left his ship in the hands of the nearest person.  Every single one of them removed their own obstacle from Kirk’s path to the big chair.

The dialogue is a completely different story.  Most of it comes straight out of the Big Fukkin Book of Action Movie Dialogue Book For Big Fukkin Summer Movies: Lock and load while saddlin’ up Edition with a New Foreword by Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer.  The bright exceptions being Spock and McCoy.  Karl Urban channeled Deforest Kelley pretty effectively, though it felt a little forced at times.  Zachary Quinto did a damn fine Spock and seemed to be the best written character in the movie.  Kirk’s lines were rather limp and his fight scenes were a travesty for the flying-leg-kicker.  He used to win fights.  I feel like shouldn’t hold that against the movie, but for a guy who was supposed to have “advanced hand to hand training,” he got his ass beat a lot.

The major point that I can imagine everyone griping over, which I feel would be too spoilery to reveal, is explained with the epitome of all Star Trek explanations in all series, ever and for all time: alternate realities.  There is not a single series that didn’t deal with this aspect of time travel, so far as I know, and a movie using it, much less the director and writers using it, feels so utterly appropriate that I almost want to applaud Abrams and his people for this explanation/excuse.  Except that I think applause in a movie theater is beyond stupid, unless you are attending a special screening with the stars or something.  It gives them great license and freedom in sequels, but we all know the dangers of giving people too much freedom in sequels.  Sam Raimi.

Ok, I don’t know how ashamed I should be but while watching the Superbowl last night there was a trailer for a new GI Joe movie and … I think it looks awesome. The action seems ridiculously over the top and the director hasn’t made a good movie since Deep Rising, but man did that trailer put a grin on my face.

Snake-Eyes Jumps a Car

The movie just went from me thinking about it on about the same level as Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li to thinking about it on the same level as Transformers 2 (IE, ridiculous popcorn movie based on childhood nostalgia that features tons of things blowing up).

Some other things that might make it interesting to some:

• Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the main villain Cobra Commander
• Lost’s Mr. Eko aka. Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as character named Heavy Duty
• Ray Park plays Snake Eyes
• ‘Rambo’ stunt coordinator Chad Stahelski did the fight scenes

Anyway, this by no means is an indicator that it’ll be a GOOD movie, it does seem like it could be entertaining summer popcorn action spectacle. And honestly, we need more straight-up action movies.

I guess I am supposed to be excited about this movie? It’s supposed to be funny, and maybe have some nudity, I guess?  I feel a little burned out on Apatow related stuff, I mean, he’s funny or whatever you would use for the comedic version of Luc Besson, but I just have trouble getting out of my seat for his crew.  I mean, who isn’t on the Apatow crew?  All of the comedic actor-writers out there today are connected/indebted to Judd Freaking Apatow.

Wait.

Kevin Smith is directing this?  If this is funny, I am going to hate Kevin Smith even more.  That fucking sell out.  I wonder how much of his remaining soul he had to leverage to Apatow to get Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks away from the money train.

So Iron Man comes out today (or came out yesterday or whatever) and I’m debating going to see this movie and the truth is that while it looks cool, I just can’t really muster the energy to care that I usually do.

I’m not sure why that is (the carpet advertising done here maybe) but I just feel like, meh, I’d be happy to just sit around and chill out with friends.  I don’t need some huge bombastic movie for to distract me for 2 hours and $10 dollars.

In fact, I’m more interested in seeing There Will Be Blood on DVD or playing some GTA IV or other game online with friends.  What does it say about my ‘nerd-cred’ that I wasn’t lining up at the 8PM showing last night and instead went to the gym and came home and did some more work?

Is it simply that it doesn’t feel like summer yet (damn you Wisconsin weather!) or is it simply that I don’t get the joy out of watching brown people get blown up by a dude in a suit.  I’ll be honest and say I’m not that interested in Speed Racer, Indy 4, or even The Incredible Hulk.  The only movies I’m interested in this summer are the summer comedies like The Foot Fist Way, Step Brothers, Tropic Thunder or Pineapple Express.

Of course, I saw Rambo in theaters over the winter and loved it and would gladly go see it again, so maybe I’m just looking for something that’s more straight up action and lest crazy CG junk.  Have an old guy with a 50-cal machine gun destroying dudes and I’ll probably show up.

Either way, I find it weird that I’m not more excited for the summer movie season.  If anyone wants to try to convince me that something decent and big budget is coming out though, feel free.

[Update]

Just thought of one ‘bigger budget’ movie this summer that I’m interested in seeing, Hancock. And while it may be a superhero movie, it is more interesting ground than just the standard ‘defeat the bad guys stuff’ than Hellboy, Hulk, Iron Man, or The Dark Knight.  Plus as I understand it, it’s more darkly comedic than the previews would have you believe.

I was trying not to let Chuckles recent WRN posts shame me into posting but sadly they have finally done so. I’ve been meaning to post for a while but then never really doing it. Mostly out of boredom, my life hasn’t been too exciting lately and I can only spend so long boring the internet before finally giving up.

Just a quick run down of things that are pretty enjoyable right now:

• Fall Weather – I was sick of all that summer stuff
• Everyday is another shooter – this PS3 game is pretty cool little shooter that has a nice lo-fi feel
• On-Demand movies – Ricochet, Idle Hands, and Futureworld
• Capital Amber – Replaced Spotted Cow as my beer of choice

Things I’d like to do for a bit:

• Not have to work. Seriously, I just want to spend a month sitting around doing nothing.
• Orange Box – PS3 version doesn’t come out until Dec. 17 and I don’t want to buy it for 360
• GH3/Rock Band – How tough will it be to ‘play’ guitar and sing the part on Rock Band?
• See a decent movie – Fido and Planet Terror on DVD and Amercian Gangster at the theater

Anyway, we’ll start small and work our way back up to a real post.

P.S. I also have no idea what happened to those posts from July/Aug/Sep/Oct. Blogoblin got them I suppose.

A couple of weeks ago, Chuckles and I went to go check out an advance screening of Hot Fuzz at the Arlington Cinema n’ Drafthouse with a Q&A with the creators/stars afterwards. It was a pretty good time so when the opportunity to go to another advanced screening this week for the new Judd Apatow comedy Knocked Up came up we jumped at the opportunity.

Chuckles and I got there about an hour and a half early to make sure that we could get some decent seats. After standing around for 30 minutes we were able to start the trek into the theater. After a brief delay as some under-21’s got denied entry, we were seated at our table and waiting for the movie to start.

One of the advantages of seeing a movie at the Cinema N’ Drafthouse is that you don’t have to go up to the concession stand to get stuff. Instead, a waiter comes by and takes your order. Chuckles and I were got some nachos, fries, and pitcher of Harpoon IPA and were waiting for the film to start.

We were pleasantly surprised when about 15 minutes before the movie was to begin, a local standup comic, Justin Schlagel, and entertained us with his routine for about 20 minutes. After Chuckles experience with the DC Onion Kickoff party it was nice to have a nicely participating audience and a comedian who was not completely trashed telling some fairly comical jokes. I definitely enjoyed the jokes making fun of the DC ‘grid’ system.

At the end of his act, it was time for Knocked Up to start. The movie was definitely funny. With some familiar faces from 40 Year Old Virgin I guess I was expecting something that was more similar in tone. While it was at times, I just didn’t get the same feeling walking out. Maybe it was the lack of an ending dance number but it just had a different feeling. Not bad, just more serious I think.

Really, the biggest issue I had with the film is that since its plot is about two people who don’t know each other very well having a baby together and them trying to develop a relationship because of that, many of the notes it hits are similar to those hit in the current season of Scrubs. I know this movie was filmed before these Scrubs episodes were but the fact that the Scrubs finale was broadcasting the same night as we saw this movie, it was particularly fresh in my mind.

I don’t know if Chuckles has a different take on this but I thought it was a solid movie that didn’t quite capture the brilliance of The 40 Year Old Virgin but was still a solid release.

Honestly, the best thing I saw yesterday was the new ‘Exclusive’ trailer for the Transformers movie. Anything that doesn’t have giant robots beating the bejebus out of each other is going to pale in comparison.

UPDATE: Chuckles take in the full post.

(more…)

So this weekend I was one of the approximately 1.2 billion people who went to see Spider-man 3. I saw it Friday with some people who live by me and some friends from work. I bought the tickets Friday before lunch and when I came back, the show was sold out.

The people I saw it with were slightly underwhelmed but I had a good time. Not the best Spider-man movie but pretty entertaining still. I’ll be interested to see what Sam Raimi does after this though. Maybe he’ll finally have that budget for Darkman 5.

More interestingly though, I also rented a couple classic movies this weekend and ones that I sadly have to admit that I had never seen. The first was Chinatown, the Roman Polanski film that stars Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. I knew it was good but not much else (which seems to be the case for a lot of classic movies) and was not disappointed. I’d recommend it to most anyone.

The second movie I watched was Lawrence of Arabia. I really enjoyed that one as well. The characters in it were interesting and it’s so epic that it hurts. It’s crazy when you watch old movies and realize that none of that stuff was done with CGI and that all the people were actually there. It makes everything seem so much larger than life when you know it’s not just some dudes sitting in a room with a computer but actual people out there in the environment doing these things.

At the end of the day, I’m glad that I’m finally starting to understand why these works were so important and how they are still referenced in movies today. I’m honestly getting tempted to do more than just watch them. A huge step for a guy who sucks at critically analyzing art.

Up in my queue next are: Spartacus, The Dirty Dozen, and the original Gone In 60 Seconds. If anyone has suggestions for other great classics to add to the queue, please chime in.

My current queue is after the break

(more…)

While the folks over at the 3Bulls! (is the ! mandatory like Yahoo!?) discuss the horrible junkfood of the body via there 5000 Calorie Challenge they’ve got going on over there, I thought now might be a good chance to point out that the same excess can be seen in our summer movie crop this year.

I’m too lazy to research this fact, but I’m pretty sure that this summers crop of 6 (SIX!!) movies that are the third in the series is the most ever in a single summer. Some of these movies are called ‘trilogies’ while others are just sequels.

The interesting thing here is how sequels and movie franchises are achieving the kind of widespread (non-direct to video) success they are. I’m sure much of it is because of companies are wanting less risk by going with established brands but many of these movies are actually not half bad.

The full list of third movies is below:

1. Spider-Man 3
2. Pirates of the Caribbean 3
3. Shrek the Third
4. Ocean’s 13
5. Rush Hour 3
6. The Bourne Ultimatum

Considering there are only really two movies on that list that are guaranteed to suck (Shrek and Rush Hour), 3 that will most likely be good (Spider-Man, Pirates, and Bourne), and one who knows (Ocean’s 13), that’s not a bad crop of sequels.

We’ve also got two greater than three movies coming out this summer, Harry Potter and the Something Something and Live Free and Die Hard (Die Hard 4.0 for our international reader), there’s a lot less risk in the summer tent-pole Blockbuster crowd this summer.

Anyway, enjoy the movies. Try not to choke on any Twizzlers.

Do you ever hear something and say, “That sounds like a clever idea?” then never follow up. Then when you think about it 6-12 months later and do follow up you find out it’s too late and it didn’t work out.

That’s how I felt about RiffTrax, a site by Michael J. Nelson a writer and later a star on Mystery Science Theater 3000. I heard about it a while ago and said “that sounds interesting!” but then never bothered to follow up.

Today I’m reading TVSqad and I see that a new RiffTrax has been recorded with special guest contributor Niel Patrick Harris. I’d assumed that RiffTrax had put out maybe a track or two or three and then quit. But when I visit the site I see that there are tons of tracks and that they put out a track almost every week and a half to two weeks.

They also have expanded to include the guys from MST3K (although they’re not ‘in character’ it’s clearly Tom Servo). I think I’m going to have to give this a try this weekend though. There are certainly more than enough movies on the list that I own or could get from the ol’ double B.

I’ve included a sample below so as to whet your appetite. Enjoy blog monkeys!

While performing actual work today, I stumbled across some interesting information on a number of movies that Warner Brothers is either working on or shelving. (more…)