We got ST IV watched the other night, and I really enjoyed it. The humor is of course, nice, and the more I watch it the less I dislike the time travel aspect of it. Plus it was really good getting to see the fine detail. Catherine Hicks just jumps off the screen in this resolution, and you forget how much her sparkle added to the film.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (Blu-ray); Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (Blu-ray)
Watched the Blu-ray version of ST II: TWOK the other night and was a little underwhelmed by the "restored" version. It looked very good, but by comparison to TMP and Star Trek III: TSFS it didn't seem any better quality-wise. It does benefit from the higher resolution, of course, but it didn't just jump out at me.
Star Trek III has really always been my favorite, and it is even more so merely "remastered" on Blu-ray. The lighting of the sets is different from TWOK - the Enterprise bridge is noticeably brighter, and that seemed to me to make the movie actually better quality resolution-wise than TWOK, which had a ful "restoration".
Of course I like the extra Starfleet ships and the Spacedock scenes are just fun to watch. Nimoy just has a better touch, it seems to me, for the characters - the constant joking and comic touches fit better, and it just seems better in focus than in TWOK, where sometimes the dialogue just doesn't sound quite right. TSFS is just a more fun movie for me.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Blu-Ray)
I'm watching the boys for six days while Jamie vacations in Mackinaw with girlfriends, and last night they wanted to watch Star Trek on Blu-Ray so we picked up the Blu-Ray with the six original cast movies and settled down to watch TMP (and parts of VI, but not the whole thing - they just like to watch the Enterprise and Excelsior beat hell out of the Klingon ship).
I had read a review of the BR version of TMP, and it thought it was a really good transfer, with good blacks and a terrific sound, but it didn't mention if this was the 2001 Director's Cut. I eventually figured out it was not.
Well, I have to agree that the blacks were good - visually the film looked really good and the special effects once you got into space were stunning. The entire V'ger section the visuals were just amazing, aided greatly by the deep blacks they got. The shots of the V'ger exterior were still good at best and awful at worst, though - but the interiors were unbelievabl. I couldn't believe this film was made thirty years ago. The greater detail also helped tell the story a lot better - I didn't really mind the missing parts added in the 2001 cut as much as I thought I would - what were there told the story well enough. The flaws in the movie really had a lot more to do with what was left in that what was missing. Well, aside from a decent plot. Oh, yes, the drydock scene. This was really pretty good, but the difference in quality depended very much on how complex the shot was. The quality where it was a simple pass of the ship in dock was quite clear (as was the case with the space shots). But where there were other elements composited in - an Earth background, or moving elements, etc. - the image quality dropped way off. And the "over the shoulder" shots inside the travel pod were terrible. But, again, that was the available technology. It's amazing I still care about that scene after 30 years.
The sound on the other hand, was disappointing. I probably don't have the ultimate sound system, but I still thought the sound was bare at best (until the end when they were at V'ger, and then it was pretty good). I'll have to go back and watch the 2001 version, but I seem to recall the sound mix was better - helped a lot my not having the time pressures that caused the original to be a bit of a mess.
Anyway, even though this was just a higher res version of the film (it didn't receive the full restoration that Star Trek II did) I still really enjoyed it, and so did the boys. It benefits particularly well from the larger screen and better resolution. I saw a lot I'd never noticed before. But I would still like to see a Blu-Ray version of the 2001 edition. I think the film just needs more than to be simply cleaned up and presented in higher resolution.
Star Trek V
Parker walked in the other night and announced he wanted to watch Star Trek V, so we sat down and over two nights did just that. I was reminded again that parts of this movie are really pretty good, especially when you've seen a younger Kirk so that this midlle-aged guy makes more sense. It just has some achingly bad scenes, and suffers from grotesquely bad production values at times (shuttle bay, special effects in general, and the end scene in the "ribcage"). But I can't say that Shatner's direction was bad - the movie has some of my favorite visual images, the music is terrific, I like the actors... it just is very uneven. But I kept finding myself watching the beginning and for twn or fifteen or twenty minutes wondering why I thought this was a bad movie. Then the "beans and borbon" joke comes and I remember.
Underworld III: Rise of the Lycans
Well, I didn't exactly dislike it. Any time you get to watch Bill Nighy play a vampire it's a good couple of hours, and here it's unrelieved by the distraction of Kate Beckinsale being on the screen when you're trying to pay attention to a movie. Not that Rona Mitra is not attractive - it's just that she's not excessively, distractingly attractive in that smoky china doll way Beckinsale is. And thus is a lot easier to watch in a movie.
Oh, yes, the movie. I thought I'd seen this before, and I had - in flashbacks in the first movie. The production values were outstanding and Michael Sheen was terrific, but I just got a little bored with it. I already knew the plot, the characters, and the ending. Why'd they bother to make this anyway? I'm not even afraid of werewolves any more now - there were literally fields of them here, and it was like watching a herd of elk. I used to be terrified of just the thought that a werewolf might show up on screen, and here they're like cockroaches. No, actually I'm more afraid of cockroaches now.
In its defense, I should point out that I watched this in the study (i.e. on a small screen) with lights halfway up, so it might be more impressive and scarier on the big screen and in the dark in the movie room. But it does have werewolves so I have to take it easy the first time. Now that I now nothing scary's going to jump out at me I may try turning the lights down. Uh, I mean all the way down.
Star Trek
Just went to see this again yesterday with the boys, since it sometimes takes me a couple of viewings to get a better idea of a movie like this where I have some baggage regarding the book/prior movies, etc. The bottom line for me is that it's a great movie as a movie (regardless of whether you know anything about Trek), an extraordinarily good reboot of the franchise, and it promises even better follow-ons. There are a lot of comparisons to Batman Begins, and I think they are good ones, because this movie was saddling with the origin story of multiple characters, and it's not going to be till the sequel that you seem the franchise really blossom.
The beginning section with Kirk's father George Kirk on the USS Kelvin got to me as it did a lot of other people (mostly dads, to be honest). Never cried in a Trek movie before. Well, aside from the drydock scene in Star Trek: TMP. Well, and when the Enterprise was destroyed in Star Trek III. But that was it. Really. But I challenge any father to sit through that part of the movie and not be blubbering by the time the opening credits get there. You just don't expect a Star Trek movie to punch you in the gut emotionally. But this one does, and right at the outset. (The performances of George Kirk and the Kelvin's captain - who is a badass, by the way, were exceptional).
In no particular order, here are some comments I had. I didn't like the tan shipboard tunics - while I really appreciate the homage to the original uniforms, it just looked like casual Friday on the bridge - that fabric just looks sloppy. (The red and blue did a lot better). A minor point, but it nagged at me. The new uniforms (Pike's gray, cadet) I thought were fine - I was just expecting some sort of jacket on board over the black shirts, and you get this wrinkly pajama thing. The problem is really the color - you'll notice they darkened the others from light blue to royal blue and red to maroon, and when darker, they work okay. The originals looked good because they were velour, which is a heavy fabric that doesn't show wrinkling as the actor moves.
I initially didn't like Leonard Nimoy's performance - for some reason I found the whole Spock Prime section jarring, but it was way better the second time. To be fair I was already really annoyed at how Kirk was escaping being eaten by not one but two creatures by the skin of his teeth on an ice planet, only to run into an ice cave and be saved by the one other person within miles (and one of only two on the whole planet, as far as I know. I think plausibility would have been far better served if he had ben saved because someone saw the situation he was in and intervened, not because he happened to run into them).
On the ship design, I think the interior sets are way too bright and overall I just didn't like them (they may be better, but I'm way too used to the TOS sets, despite their flaws, to be objective). I can live with the exterior, though - it looks a lot better in the movie than in stills, and it'll grow on me. I read that they were consciously trying to make it look more like a hot rod, and I think they did. My boys are playing interchangeably with the TOS, TWOK and STXI Enterprise toys, and each has its good points. But I just this minute (mediating a fight between the twins over the ST toys) looked at the Enterprise toy and realized for the first time that the forward-slung secondary hull - which until now I hated - really looks cool, as it echoes the shape of the nacelles, and gives the ship a comet-shaped look from any angle. Pulling the nacelles in was also a nice touch, I now have to admit. I can already tell that for all its awkwardness from certain angles (something no Enterprise can avoid) I think this will become "the" Enterprise now. On balance, it may really be the best.
The way the characters fall together was really a bit much to swallow, I agree, but that's the problem with a movie that has to handle the origin story of half a dozen people. Chekov's age (he's now 17) actually didn't bother me - had a wunderkind like he been around, it doesn't surprise me that he might be in place at that age. Look at Doogie Howser. What did bother me was the way there were no ranks - no hierarchy on this sparkling new starship. There was a captain, a commander who was first officer - and apparently no one else - and Pike appoints a suspended cadet as first officer, despite a shipload of lieutenants? It makes sense to me that he gives Kirk a battlefield commission at that point as a lieutenant, and he clearly seems to see Kirk's talent, but there have to be a whole herd of not just lieutenants but lt. commanders and commanders on the ship, and we never see them.
But I did think of a caveat last night. The Enterprise was commissioned in a hurry for this trip, and it is at least conceivable that it might have a less established hierarchy, or even a dearth of commanders in the first place, which is why an instructor like Spock gets pulled aboard. (Incidentally, I don't buy that a major warship like this gets commissioned in a hurry with a new crew, but that's a ST evergreen, so I probably shouldn't object too much). But I think the answer is somewhere else, and is related to why I think is is very logical that after this thing happens, they hand Kirk the Enterprise on a platter (which a lot of Trek veterans find hard to swallow).
In the movie Pike is on a sort of crusade to try to get people like Kirk into Starfleet - people with some daring and willingness to take risks, to "leap before looking". That's actually about as canon as canon gets because if you read Kirk's preface to Star Trek: TMP (the book) (yes, I did research for this blog post) he jokes about how his Starfleet class was the first that had lower standards because the existing braniacs they were turning out were turning out to be unsuited for space exploration. The destruction of the Kelvin 12 years prior is at this stage the only change in the Prime universe, so I don't see any reason to not assume this is still the situation here. Pike says he read everything on Kirk, and he knows that this is the guy he wants as a future starship captain. Assume Kirk has been hanging out in bars for a couple or three years since he should have left for college - that makes him one or two years out of college in age when the call-up comes - say 24 or 25. Nineteenth century frigate captains like Nelson and Cochrane (who were the models for Forester's Hornblower who, in turn was the model for Roddenberry's starship captain) were not much older than this when they had their first commands (maybe younger , and the assumption here (magnificently borne out by Chris Pine's performance, I have to say) is that some people are suited for that role, and age and experience may not be the best guides.
While I agree that it is unrealistic to have Starfleet empty its classrooms to populate combat units, there are a couple of caveats worth noting that make me think this isn't so crazy a plot device after all. It is perhaps worth noting that the military did something similar in WW II - training and military academy courses were cut short and students were turned out on an accelerated schedule. (In WW I mobilization like this happened all across Europe, with units calling up civilians with military experience in a well-planned mobilization that took only days to begin and weeks to complete). What I really think happened here was that when the call-in came somebody made the decision to treat this emergency as a giant training opportunity and sent the entire Academy out to essentially intern on Starfleet vessels in a combat mission to get experience. Maybe they helped get ships up to full strength (possibly - neither the movie nor the book is real clear on that). When I was in graduate school we were required to go out and do a internship with a public sector entity for three months as a condition on graduation, so it's possible that given the emergency Starfleet just decided that whatever intern or in the field training program it whad would be supplemented by this. If this really was the Apocalypse, this is what you'd do. And if it isn't, it's an invaluable exercise in training and mobilization. Send everybody out on a real crisis to observe and help out if they can and the survivors come back with invaluable experience - what is what according to the book ended up happening. All the cadets just got commissioned several weeks (or months) early.
Which brings me to Kirk retaining the Enterprise, which makes complete sense to me, and here's why. Pike has been on a crusade to get captains like Kirk, and the only thing we know about the aftermath of the Nero incident is that Pike is now an admiral, and the only thing he did during the entire incident was to hand everything to Kirk. Despite knowing Kirk was suspended, he (1) listened to and followed Kirk's warning about what was happening (2) made Kirk first officer (3) gave Kirk the assignment of taking out the drill, and (4) left him in command of the Enterprise after Kirk rescued him. The result was that Kirk saved the Federation, completely vindicating Pike's belief, despite his utter lack of experience. Now, I assume that there would have been an attempt to put Kirk into a different job - maybe first officer on another ship - based on concerns about age and experience - but I think we all know Pine's Kirk well enough to know what he would have said, knowing full well that politically there was no way in hell Starfleet could say no to him. He would have said he wanted to keep the Enterprise, and the crew he had, and given what he had accomplished, I don't think he could have been refused. Take into account also the brilliant political stroke of offering the Narada assistance right after it had tried to kill him fourteen different ways. That displayed a a gift for logic that demonstrably out-Vulcan'ed the Vulcans and showed he had the judgment that the job required - in the heat of the moment he could still see the geopolitical (galactipolitical?) implications of what he was doing, and make a record that the politicians back home could work with. That one action could well have resulted in a order from on high that this guy gets whatever he asks for. The more I think about it, that exchange was the high point of the movie for me - it was the best character moment for Kirk because it showed him working on multiple levels, and the best relationship moment for Kirk and Spock - my boys keep repeating it around the house because they thought it was so funny.
Now he should have followed orders and taken another job - and I think Shatner's Kirk would have - but Pine's wouldn't. He knows now that what Pike said three years ago was right - this is what he was made for, (and this is the job Spock said his father saw him get in the Prime universe). So it makes complete sense to me that at the end they let him have the Enterprise as his first command, even though he's about four years younger than he was in the Prime universe when he got his first command, and maybe eight from when he got the Enterprise. (Probably two thirds of Starfleet hopes he falls flat on his face, and will have it out for him, like Finney in "Court Martial" but that's for a sequel).
Here's what I though about the characters. One overall comment. In the original, I never considered anyone except Spock a prodigy, and Kirk as an example of what FDR was once described as - a second rate intellect but a first-rate temperament. In this movie, Kirk is genius-level as well. In the original series, as well as here this is a crew of highly competent but fairly ordinary humans with this wunderkind Vulcan, and I think this is different in this way. Kirk's intellectual ability isn't limited to a talent in making decisions - he also has the intellectual chops to evaluate the information directly.
Kirk: magnificent. Pine's performance was good until Kirk took command and spectacular after that, showing the character's talent for command. With respect to his missing experiences (Kodos, Farragut) I guess we'll just have to speculate how they compare to getting your ass kicked in Iowa bar fights (and I doubt the one on screen was the first, given how cocky he was!) But I really enjoyed watching him play the character.
Spock: very good. No complaints. He was pretty emotionally constipated most of the movie (which was his job), but after he realized that Kirk really was the counterpart he needed, he relaxed visibly (of course it's possible there may have been something inducing that in the elevator scene that got cut, hmmm?) The interplay towards the end was as good as I have ever seen it between these two, and I can't wait to see more. He has just the right touch of dry wit that Spock needs.
Pike: Great. Holds the whole movie together. Are you going to tell this guy he doesn't know what he's doing? I didn't think so.
McCoy: very good. I look forward to seeing the relationship with Kirk, as I can see him leaning on McCoy a lot now that I know their background together.
Sulu: good. One of my favorite parts was where he said "I need five seconds of one quarter impulse power - I'll do the rest with thrusters" which got across in a way that 40 years of TV and movies never did that this guy is a wizard at ship handling. I also enjoyed seeing him kick some Romulan ass, and get pissed off at things. Gave him some personality.
Uhura: very good. Again, the writers persuaded me not just that she has a talent for communications, but what that is and why it's crucial. Previously it was never clear what was so special about what she was doing. Now I think she's a critical part of the team - she's the ears. In addition to being obviously command-level talent when the need arises.
Jar Jar, uh, Scotty: good but different. This is a completely different character, and he's pretty obviously going to be the comic relief. The old Scotty was career military, and this guy is a slacker genius. I think of Doohan as this guy's dad. Presents lots of opportunities, but I prophesy that sooner or later (and I'd say before the next movie is halfway over) he's have to sub in as captain when Kirk and Spock run off, and he'll get serious and do a letter-perfect Doohan Scotty telling somebody off. (Also, is there really that much difference between this guy and Scotty when he's hit the Scotch in the drunk scenes from TOS?)
Chekov: again, totally different character. The originalwas comic relief and generally a doofus. This one is 17 years old, a whiz at some things, and chief tactical officer (as an ensign?) It'll be interesting to see what they do with him.
But the really important thing to me is that although it took 25 years, the destruction of the "original" Enterprise in ST III has now been canonically reversed. No more NCC-1701-A, and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier now actually never happened. How cool is that? This is better than bringing Spock back in III.
Bottom line for me is that this movie set the stage for a really extraordinary second act in the next movie. I can't wait.
The Day The Earth Stood Still
This was another I picked up last night and watched with all three boys. The best part about it was the acting by Jennifer Connelly and Keanu Reeves, who I thought really did well (as did John Cleese isn a small but well-written and very well handled part). The story was just a bit thin, and the environmental angle was a bit heavy-handed.
The one thing that I thought would have made it more plausible was playing up one thing Keanu said - that there are only a very small number of planets capable of supporting advanced life, and that was why the wholesale destruction of human civilization was justified. Not destroying humanity would have cost future civilizations the chance to be born, so it wasn't simply a matter of weeding out a race with flaws to satisfy an alien compulsive-retentive obsession, but instead a decision to sacrifice the good of the few for the good of the many (as Mr. Spock once put it). More could have been done to show the conflict in the aliens between their desire to preserve new life forms and new civilizations (there I go again) and their desire to preserve a unique environment for the many races that really needed it. In this context, humanity's ability to change (which I think was well-handled through Connelly's stepson's change, and the way she illustrated emotionally what Cleese told her she needed to do) would not have been enough - we had to show not just that we could change but that we deserved the right to keep our place ahead of other competing races.
As it was, it was too easy to simply say that the aliens were bad for wanting to take something away that was ours - or at the very least more ours than theirs. All we had to do was show Klaatu that we could change, and he called everything off. And that didn't provide much dramatic tension to me, making the ending way too pat. I thought it would have been better had we, for example, had to show to an existing alternative race that we deserved to keep our world. That would have introduced some overtones of Independence Day, where humans had to fight to defeat precisely the substitution hinted at here, but it would have produced more draamatic tension. As it was, all I could think of was that the aliens had no right to tell us we couldn't do as we please, even as unwise as we were being. Had we had to justify our survival over an equally deserving race needing a planet - that would have been more of a nail-biter.
2010: The Year We Make Contact
2010 has always been one of my favorite movies. I didn't like the sterile 2001, but this movie had realistic (for the time) special effect, a good story and acting, and crackled along pretty well. I even drew up plans for and halfway built a small model of the Discovery. I picked this up last night at Walmart and watched it while the boys were watching TV downstairs, and really enjoyed it. One of the guilty pleasures was watching what 1984 thought 2010 would look like from the perspective of 25 years ahead. I actually thought they didn't miss it too bad. They grossly overestimated our spaceflight progress, but grossly underestimated our progress with computer monitors - apparently no one saw flat screens coming. The assumption that the U.S. and the Soviet Union would still be intense rivals in space 25 years later was also not quite accurate. The Soveit Union no longer exists and U.S. astronauts now routinely hitch rides to the International Space Station on Russian rockets - actually aboard the same Soyuz spacecraft that were over a decade old when this movie was made.
Anyway, I really enjoyed spending some time with this old friend.
Inside Star Trek: The Real Story - Herb Solow & Bob Justman
This book was written by Star Trek's original executive producer and one of its producers, and provides a fascinating insight into how the series came to be, from someone's perspective other than Gene Roddenberry.
Star Trek was, hard as it seems to recognize now, simply a one-hour television series in the 1960's, even to the people making it. Solow successfully sold Roddenberry's concept to a network, and oversaw the production of this massively complex show on a shoestring budget at an also-ran studio (putting Star Trek in the context of its birth requires noting that it was produced by Lucille Ball's studio Desilu). Although Roddenberry went out of his way to maximize the myth that he generated everything to do with the series' creation and production, the fact of the matter was that it was many hardworking and talented people like co-producer Bob Justman, and costume and set designers that made the show work, on budgets that actually shrank as the series went on. I was already pretty familiar with the series' genesis and production through Stephen Whitfield's book, but I had never seen it from the perspective of the studio workers who made it run, nor was I familiar with Roddenberry's shortcomings, including taking advantage of cast and crew members to gain financial advantage from the show, and finally bailing out on the show entirely in its third season when it became clear that NBC's putting it in a late night time slot would kill it. But even then, even Roddenberry just saw it as another TV project, which would hopefully lead to more.
But what was the most amazing fact was that no one associated with the show - not the producers, the cast, the crew, or anyone else, ever seems to have viewed it as anything other than just another TV show. Its status as a lifestyle and a legend starting only after it was cancelled. Paramount even considered selling the entire rights to this financial money pit to Roddenberry right after cancellation, but he didn't have the $150,000 Paramount wanted. Amazing when you consider that as of when this book was written (1996) Star Trek had generated over $1.4 billion for Paramount. What it's generated in the thirteen years since then is anyone's guess, and judging by early reaction to the upcoming movie, that's only the tip of the iceberg. And it was the least desirable property in Gulf & Western's acquisition of Desilu in 1967 - its two other shows Mission Impossible and Mannix were, if not exactly making money yet, were at least not losing as much, and had the potential for generating some profits in syndication.
Amazing.
About Last Night...
This 1986 flick with Demi Moore and Rob Lowe has always been one of my favorites, and I've never understood why it took so long to come to DVD. But come it finally did, and when I saw that there was a DVD version available, I put it in my most recent order from Amazon.
The picture quality is not great by current standards, but it's far better than the video I'd watched a bazillion times, and it's the first time I've watched it on anything other than the old 19" Sony, so the picture was a big improvement. I recall that on initially watching it I was really impressed with Demi Moore's performance, and I still feel that way - it's nuanced and genuine, and it's really odd watching her so young and playing someone so insecure - but doing it really well. Rob Lowe is still clueless, but he's playing a puppy dog, and with twenty-plus years behind me, including going through a relationship (better known as "my marriage"), I can see that not only is he doing it pretty well - his character owes a lot to immaturity that I just didn't realize at the time. He learns and grows during the movie, and that process wasn't something I really appreciated watching it initially.
But the best performance of the movie has to be Elizabeth Perkins because watching her in this movie I found her bitchy, unattractive, and irredeemably obnoxious. Not too long after I saw the director of Indian Summer talking about how glad he was to have her playing the female lead because she was so sexy and funny, etc. I was thinking "what, her?" Well, yes - she does such a great job here (a truly bad hairstyle helps a lot) that you don't realize that it's just really good acting and writing. I couldn't help thinking, watching it last night, that it would have been really interesting to have her play Demi Moore's part, and have someone who really is more of an ugly sidekick playing Joan. But she really does a great part with Joan.
And no review of the movie is complete without pointing out what a great bit of writing, casting, and acting Jim Belushi was. This movie is just loaded with great lines - and he gets nearly all of them.
It was good getting to see this old friend last night - it was at least as good as a remember.
