Star Trek Rewatch

Star Trek RE-Review

Well, I saw it again, so I think I should re-evaluate what I wrote before. First of all, the soundtrack was awesome (I got it and just listening to it is really exciting and epic, maybe better than the movie itself). Second, the movie was a lot better the first time, maybe because of the audience I saw it with (I never really considered that this would make much of a difference). Because when I saw it the first time everyone knew more than me, I felt like certain things were more special, and when I looked them up on Wikipedia, and recognized them now, they weren’t as funny/layered. Third, I noticed a lot of things the actors did that were really subtle (can’t pinpoint anything exactly, but they were there). I said in my first review that I thought Chekov was sort of annoying, with the accent, but I was too caught up in just hearing the accent that I totally didn’t notice he pronounced V’s as W’s ("We are headed toward planet Wulcan"). It was hilarious. Finally, I didn’t really like the sequence on the ice planet in my first review, but it was much better on the rewatch, because I wasn’t sure when it was going to happen. It still didn’t fit in with the rest of the movie very well, though. So, I’ll keep review coming, hopefully better than this one. I’m kind of split about Angels and Demons right now, but I’ll try to see it. BTW, Leonard Nimoy is awesome.

LIVE LONG AND PROSPER!!! \\ // /

Summer Movie Review 2: Star Trek

Star Trek Pre-Watch Thoughts: SEEING THIS ON SATURDAY!! I've never really seen Star Trek (tv or movies) before, but I have a general idea what it's about...I guess I'm more of a Star Wars person. HOWEVER, I will watch anything that J.J. Abrams does, because I really like LOST and Fringe. Also, the special effects and cast look really good. And Michael Giacchino, who is brilliant, is doing the score.

Star Trek: Rating 9.5 out of 10

This is the first movie that I have seen in an advance screening, and it was a perfect way to start the summer. The Majestic didn’t open until ten, but my brother and I got there at 7:30-ish. Everyone else there seemed just as excited as we were, and I had a nice conversation about some other movies. When the lights finally went down, I was really hoping this movie would be good, and it totally beat my expectations.

I didn’t know much about Star Trek in the first place, having just watched only one episode the day before ("The City on the Edge of Tomorrow", which was pretty interesting) and looked at Wikipedia. Needless to say, I didn’t feel lost at all. Despite the time travel and references to the original series, everything was clear and well-planned out. J.J. Abrams did an excellent job of directing and incorporating both the new and old ideas, and the script was funny (I don’t think there were any lame jokes), intense, and emotional while keeping the action going. All of the main characters had full arcs (especially Kirk and Spock), and you can see how everyone worked strongly as a team.

The reason all this works is because of the excellent acting. I thought originally that this would be a weak point in the movie, that people wouldn’t accept a new cast, but the new cast ARE the same characters. They’re all instantly likable just because they are iconic figures, except for maybe Chekov and Sulu, who I don’t know much about. Chris Pine captured Kirk’s playful manner and strong leadership skills exactly, and Zachary Quinto was completely engulfed in Spock’s inner struggle between his two heritages. I didn’t really like Quinto on Heroes from what I’ve seen, but he was awesome here. The relationship between Kirk and Spock progressed very naturally and you can see how they become friends. Providing perfect comedy relief are Karl Urban as Bones McCoy (he looks and acts almost exactly like the guy in the original series) and the always hilarious Simon Pegg as Scotty. Leonard Nimoy was really good too, and he and Quinto were very similar. Uhura did a good job, but didn’t really have much to do the whole movie. Chekov and Sulu kind of got on my nerves a bit, but at least Sulu has awesome swordfighting skills (seriously, swordfighting in a sci-fi movie? Oh wait...lightsabers). Anton Yelchin, who plays Chekov, is supposed to be playing Kyle Reese in Terminator, and I hope he’s more likable in that. I think it was good that they didn’t cast incredibly famous people, because that would have been kind of distracting (the only person I felt that with was Simon Pegg).

Michael Giacchino’s score was fine, featuring some elements of the original series music. I didn’t think it was as strong as his Lost score or the music he did for Ratatouille and the Incredibles, but it did have some recognizable motifs that provided a backdrop for the action. One of the cool things was how the music changed when characters were in space rather than in a fight. The cinematography was very unique in that it used a lot of different lens flares and lighting effects (it made the action seem a lot more realistic). The special effects were also very good (the usual neat spaceships, explosions, and lasers), but I think the explosions could have been better and the teleportation effect was kind of corny. I guess if you want to see explosions, go see Transformers (they are doing a very good job marketing that, by the way...the trailers look really cool). However, the opening sequence was very awesome, and the effects and music make it very emotional. It was cool how they seamlessly incorporated CGI into making many different locations, but also used functional sets. You actually feel like you’re in space looking at different planets.

So what didn’t I like? Well, as I said before, some of the minor characters aren’t developed that much. There is a sequence on a snow planet with some monsters that feels more like Star Wars than Star Trek. It was kind of pointless. Spock’s relationship with Uhura seemed to come out of nowhere and was not developed too much. Nero, the film’s villain, didn’t do much for most of the movie, usually commanding other people, and when he does fight, the sequence is kind of short. It’s actually kind of hard to come up with any more.

It’s been said that the second movie is already in production. If so, there are four things that I think they should do:

• No more Time Travel- It was an interesting plot device, but if they keep using it people will get tired of it and things can be too easily explained.
  More powerful enemies- I thought Nero was a good enemy in that the audience was somewhat sympathetic to him, but they really drove in the point that what he was doing he did for revenge. The next bad guy should be really truly evil, and maybe be from a group of evil aliens (that way, they don’t have to save the epic war for the third movie). The third movie could deal with some kind of cosmic power. I’m sure there’s lots of stuff from the show they can draw on.
• Minor Characters developed more- I guess they weren’t as likable because we don’t know that much about them. If Kirk starts to grow into his role as Captain, I’d like to see him be more of the leader and the other characters change more also.
• It shouldn’t take place on Earth or Vulcan. This movie had a lot of scenes on these planets. Writers, go far away from this solar system. The Enterprise is supposed to be exploring far away universes, not exclusively dealing with threats to this one.

I don’t want to poke at too many flaws, because this movie was very solid and probably the best movie I’ve seen in the past couple of months. Good writing, acting, directing, effects, basically just good overall. I’ll probably see it again, and I recommend it to everybody!!

The Great Summer Movie Blockbuster Review-a-thon Note Thingy

I started this on Facebook, I'll post all my reviews on here also!!

Wolverine Pre-Watch thoughts: I started watching this online, which kind of goes against my principles (I don't really like watching movies online, TV shows are ok), but I'm not a huge X_Men/Marvel fan. The workprint version is kind of cool in that you can see how they did some of the fx, but I don't think it's that good so far (I'm about half an hour in). I guess I'll do a Marvel vs. DC note soon, i've been thinking about it (DC wins, by the way).

Wolverine: Rating 6.5 out of 10

I didn’t think it was as terrible as many people have been saying. The directing and acting were very well done, but my main problem was with the plot. The dialogue and major plot points come off as very cliched (he asks for dog tags with the name "Wolverine" on them...I thought he was given that name by Weapon X), and most of the movie was already featured in the trailers. Wolverine himself is not that relatable, because we don’t know too much about him. It’s like the writer asks us to have sympathy with him just because he’s Wolverine and he’s a hero (a storyline with his wife drives his internal conflict, but it’s not very effective because we only know her for about two short scenes). SPOILER: There’s one part where Wolverine leaves a special team because he thinks what they do is immoral, but only a bit later he decides to take revenge (Spoiler End). Also, Stryker is a terrible villain and the way they dealt with him in the end was really stupid. The final resolution was very well done, except with a bit too much of Deus Ex Machina.

The special effects really aren’t that great (I know I was watching the unfinished version, but a lot looked mostly done) (the first chase scene was boring, and the other fight scenes are too short). It was interesting to see the fight choreography though, how Wolverine and Sabertooth fight like animals and how the mutants use their powers. One issue I had was with the bad guys. If Wolverine is supposed to be so powerful, they would have to be really powerful also, but they continually seem to let him get away.

I guess a lot of people went into this movie thinking it would be like Watchmen (the plot is somewhat reminiscent, one hero visits others) or The Dark Knight, a deconstruction of superheroes on a grand scale. It actually plays like a bit better than average summer popcorn movie, and there are so many opportunities that they could have tied in important themes or incredible moments, but missed. For example, the whole opening credits sequence with Wolverine fighting in many wars could be expanded, because it was actually really interesting.

The other thing people seem to be complaining about was the use of the other X-Men as basically cameos. Seeing as I really haven’t read that many X-Men comic books, I don’t really know how bad they messed anyone up, but it was pretty annoying how characters just showed up and left. I mean, Charlie (Dominic Monaghan) only had about 10 minutes total screen time, and I feel really sorry for Kevin Durand. Gambit was incredibly cool, though, and I didn’t like him that much in the comics. Also, I expected Wolverine to be a lot darker and to make a lot of sarcastic quips. Jackman’s Wolverine was mostly serious the whole time, which I wasn’t really used to. Overall, I think this movie is a conglomeration of good ideas, bad choices and execution, too many Fox-mandated ideas, and not really being in touch with what the audience wanted to see . But mostly bad choices.

Site of the Day

I don't know if I'll do this on a regular basis, maybe just when I find stuff. I always though blogs that had regular features were cool.

So, today's site is http://tiltshiftmaker.com/photo-processing.php . With it, you can make your own tilt-shift photographs.


What is a tilt-shift photograph? Well, to get the answer, lets go to Wikipedia:

Tilt-shift photography refers to the use of camera movements on small- and medium format cameras. In many cases, it refers to tilting the lens relative to the image plane and using a large aperture to achieve a very shallow depth of field. The technique relies on the Scheimpflug principle and usually requires the use of special lenses.


This concept can be duplicated by selectively making an image out of focus, which is called miniature faking. http://tiltshiftmaker.com/photo-processing.php can help you do this to make pretty cool pictures of landscapes and environments.
Here's Blair:

Thoughts

Well, it's 8:15, and I've been thinking I should do a blog post...maybe every week I'll do at least one. The topic of the day: Apple

I just downloaded the keynote address from Macworld 2009, and there's one thing that's bugging me. It's the overriding sense that you can tell what Apple's trying to do (their marketing strategy). It's just been more noticeable lately.
If you look at the language that the speaker uses, several words pop up very frequently:

It's very COOL, EASY, BEAUTIFUL, SIMPLE, Just Great, AMAZING!!

It's like anytime they needed an adjective, they chose one off a list of company approved words. Now, I'm not saying this is bad...any company tries to get people to buy into their own reality, it's advertising. Apple's target audience is young to middle age people who are obviously tech-savy, as well as new consumers looking for something EASIER than regular systems. However, you should be aware that they're trying to get you to buy into their fantasy world of perfect, slick, innovation. It's almost like Disney in a way.

I'm not trying to bash Apple products (I am a ipod lover, and I'm looking forward to getting a macbook and an ipod touch, hopefully), which most of the time do what they say. Maybe I'm just trying to caution myself from becoming an Apple fanboy, spending loads of money on each new thing that comes out.

Someone should do a study on how technology is affecting how we think...it would show some interesting information.

In other news, Scrubs was back yesterday. It was pretty good, and people I know who have followed it for a long time said it was a return to form. By the way, it's exactly 2 weeks til LOST comes back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Maybe I should start doing TV reviews?

If anyone is reading this, what do you think about Apple's marketing strategy?

Welcome!

Don't know if I'll get around to actually using this blog, but if I do, expect to find the following:

• My thoughts on life


• LOST awesomeness


• Watchmen awesomeness


• The pitfalls of the college application process


• Good Movies


• Random reflections on life

Sorry for the weird title, I had to pick something.

I was going to insert a cool picture of a lemur doing karate here, but alas, I can't find the link.

Have a Good Day!!