Star Trek

Staring: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, Walter Koenig

In March I posted on the remastering of Star Trek to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the series.

To put it bluntly, Star Trek was a pioneer of television, and at the very least was the forerunner to what modern sci-fi became. Sure Star Wars really pushed this forward in 1977, but without Trek, Wars - and most of the science fiction that followed would be nowhere.

Sure the series is riddled with some cheap sets - none more obvious than "Spectre of the Gun", in which the crew finds themselves in the wild west... where all the buildings are made up of one singular wall, and the rest being a quite minimalist set. It was done on purpose - and written as such.

Some find old effects "quaint", I don't. I don't want to blast the episodes that my roommate owns, but frankly after seeing what they can do with the remastered footage, it's hard to watch the equivalent "original" series effect shots. They're riddled with see-through Enterprise shots where the stars pass the ship, and apparently right through it too.

The interaction between characters was fantastic. The camaraderie between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy can barely be beat.

What the show really did well was tell a story. This is not to say that all 79 episodes were in any way, shape, or form fantastic, but that when they did the series right it was brilliant. More often than not the series was spot on in its delivery, which might be why even 40 years later so many people are turned onto the series even today.

****½/*****

The Prisoner

1967-1968
Staring: Patrick McGoohan, Leo McKern, Colin Gordon, Peter Swanwick, Angelo Muscat.

Personally there are few shows that come around where it is near excellence from start to finish. This is one of the few that join the ranks of such shows as The Office (UK), Arrested Development, and Babylon 5.

The series centers around a spy (McGoohan) who has resigned from his job. After quiting he's drugged and wakes up in a place only known as "The Village." Its inhabitants are all former spies or people who "knew too much" on specific topics that would be important to the "other side." This side is never explicitly shown to be either the West, or the Soviets. This ambiguity is in many ways one of the key aspects as to why the series is so great.

The set design, costumes, and soundtrack are include a great amount of incredibly 60's trippiness that one wonders how many drugs they may have been up to when originally developing the series and episode plots. The wackiness of the plots only serve to help the sense of desperation that No. 6 (McGoohan) must feel as he tries to cope with his new prison (of the body and mind) and seek a way to ultimately escape if he's able.

I would recommend to watching the series in the order presented by A&E, which is a slightly different ordering of episodes - allowing for a much more logical flow of the character's development (there were some instances in the original order where they'd refer to 6's stay as if he was there for quite some time only to have an episode a few down the road refer to him "recently arriving").

Things one will note (if you are heavily into sci-fi - though this is not a requirement) is that the character of Bester in Babylon 5 uses the same hand gesture and phrase when departing, "Be seeing you!" The concept (and even McGoohan reprising his role as No. 6) appear in the Simpsons episode "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes". Where they are taken to "The Island", which is the village in everything but name.

*****/*****

The Bourne Ultimatum

Staring: Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, Joan Allen, David Strathairn, Paddy Considine, Albert Finney, Scott Glenn, Tom Gallop.
Director: Paul Greengrass.

Leaving off just about exactly where the second film left off (it becomes very clear once you see the film what I mean), Jason is most definitely still on the run. After the Moscow shootout, he’s beginning to remember even more of his past before he lost his memory, but everything is still in pieces.

The CIA is back at it with black-ops project Black Briar, a program set up almost immediately after Treadstone was shut down (the project is even mentioned at the end of the first film if you pay attention to Brian Cox’s dialogue).

To be perfectly honest I didn’t imagine how this film could top the previous film. I went into this movie with extraordinarily high expectations and to be perfectly honest, they exceeded them about 10 fold. At the moment this is probably my most favorite film of the year, and at this rate it will be tough to beat.

The acting of all the cast is phenonominal, and they certainly didn’t spare any expense in this department. Returning is Damon, Allen, and surprisingly Stiles does a decent job. Joining the cast is Strathairn, Glenn, Finney, and Considine who all do a great job.

Again, there are a lot of complaints about Greengrass’ direction and use of the “shaky cam.” But I forgot, it is actually 1907, so I digress. So if you haven’t seen this film check it out while it is still in theaters, and if you haven’t watched any of the films rent/buy/borrow the first two immediately and then drive to your local movie theater to see this!

****½/*****

Recut movie trailer madness! Part 2

Citizen Kane:



West Side Story:



American Pie:



American Pie 2:

Recut movie trailer madness!

Enter the Dragon:


Mary Poppins:


Ten Commandments:


and the best, The Shining:

The Bourne Supremacy

2004
Staring: Matt Damon, Brian Cox, Julia Stiles, Franka Potente, Karl Urban, Joan Allen, Marton Csokas, Gabriel Mann, Tomas Arana.
Director: Paul Greengrass.

This is perhaps one of the better sequels ever made, the Bourne Supremacy only builds on the foundations set up from the first film.

Leaving off more or less from where the first film left off, Jason’s still on the run. Just when he thinks things are safe for once, someone targets him. At the same time in Berlin a CIA operation goes horribly wrong, and Jason is the prime suspect. Who has set up Jason and why did they go after him after all this time? Bourne is back for revenge, and won’t take any prisoners.

I found the end footrace and tunnel chase sequences to be one of the best chase scenes in the last decade.

I’ll admit that the stylistic differences between Doug Liman and Paul Greengrass are apparent from the get go – one has a much more smooth style of filmmaking while the other goes straight for the steadycam “gritty” filmmaking. Personally for the Bourne films neither is better than the other, probably because the storytelling is so damn good.

There were a lot of people who were enraged by the steadycam work in this film. They claimed to feel “sick” after seeing this. I mean, is this 1903 where people got sick from seeing the scenery moving in the background of the “The Great Train Robbery”? I suppose 15 years of watching Law and Order – and more recently 24 kind of made me completely ignore this entirely. It’s not hard to follow, and it’s not “vomit inducing” you drama queens.

****/*****

The Bourne Identity

2002
Staring: Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Chris Cooper, Clive Owen, Brian Cox, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Gabriel Mann, Julia Stiles.
Director: Doug Liman.

Jason Bourne wakes up, rescued by fishermen, and does not remember a single aspect of his life. Piecing together what exactly happened to him and all the events leading up to it. He soon realizes that there’s something serious wrong with his life, and that he’s in great danger from someone – unbeknownst to him it is the US Government themselves, operating a secret program called Treadstone – a covert CIA operation.

The intrigue surrounding his “disappearance” from the program and his subsequent reappearance in Europe, poking his head into business that may expose the entire CIA’s covert program lead to a wild goose chase across Europe. With European police after him as well as the US Government, can Jason Bourne continue to hide for very long before finding out the truth?

The (best) worst excuse for disliking the film was when I heard that someone was flabbergasted that since the movie implies he “can't remember anything”, and that if he didn’t remember anything “then why is he acting like a criminal”? Hilarity. Almost as bad as someone claiming that if he was (in fact) a government secret agent, how could he fail a mission? Apparently people aren’t human anymore! The gall of people to be only human! It’s also nothing like the novel it is based on, but that’s like disliking Goldfinger, or The Spy Who Loved Me because it doesn’t keep faithful to the original story. The point is moot.

The sequels are surprisingly as good, and in many respects better than this film.

****/*****

The Simpsons Movie

Staring the voices of: Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Harry Shearer, Hank Azaria

Surprisingly, the Simpsons film was surprisingly good, and for the most part, a coherent film! The biggest problem going for it is that the writers treated it almost no differently than a regular length episode, causing much strain to the main plotline towards the middle of the film, plotlines that ended up nowhere, and a “quick fix” resolution. Perhaps I should not berate the film for it’s faults, as these are generally keynote aspects of the series itself now that I think more about it.

It could very well be that I went into this film with such low expectations that I was pleasantly surprised with the end result. For quite some time I was excited with the prospect that this film was going to be released, but as the film’s opening date approached I became less and less convinced with it. The constant “Spider-Pig” cues in the commercials, the same jokes used time and time again for weeks on end in the commercials, and so on and so forth made me question this even further.

The film starts with probably the most brilliant scene of the film – albeit somewhat lifted directly from the South Park film. It starts with Itchy and Scratchy’s “big screen” debut and ends with Homer calling out the audience for going to pay for a film we could watch on TV. The best bit is that I watched two episodes on TV at dinnertime before heading off to see this.

I’d have to say the biggest problem with the film is the lack of characters. Sure most of them show up, but they’re there for one or two lines. I understand that they only have so much time to fill 85 minutes, but that’s almost 4 entire episodes (at 22 or so minutes each without commercials). Alternatively if you select 4 episodes of the series it is enough time to spend on just about all the secondary characters (with even enough time for ancillary characters which show up once in a while – Cletus and Dr. Nick for example). Oh well. Perhaps with the success of this film they can do more.

With the obvious heavy use of computers to aid the animation, it’s pretty sickening that the film could have honestly cost around $75 million to make and months and months to “animate.” I guess it’s just too much to ask for, especially considering that an entire season of South Park can be animated in about the same time it takes for one regular episode of The Simpsons to be animated from scratch.

Heck, it could have been worse; it could have been the terrible Family Guy “movie.”

***/*****

Cheerleader Camp

1987
Staring: Betsy Russell, Leif Garrett, Lucinda Dickey, Lorie Griffin, Teri Weigel, George 'Buck' Flower.
Director: John Quinn.

A lot can be said about a 1980s horror film. From the onset Cheerleader Camp pays homage to (or rips off) both Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th. In both instances it fails, though as a semi-ripoff of Friday the 13th it marginally works. I mean, it's cheerleaders getting slashed at camp!

The film inexplicably co-stars the likes of 80s pop-culture such as Leif Garrett. No singing though, except for a hilarious (or horrifying - depending on who you ask) lipsynced "music routine." And of course, Teri Weigel, the soon to be playmate, and current hardcore porn actress. You should also reconize "Pop" - the crazy guy as the bum from Back to the Future.

The thing that gets me is that the killer has absolutely no motivation for the killings. Then again, many horror films have killers with no real motivations - so can I really complain?

Film making quality: **/*****
Enjoyability: ****/*****