Star Trek Into Darkness: film review

I found Star Trek Into Darkness to be a very good film that addressed some of the concerns raised by fans over the previous film. Star Trek Into Darkness is surprisingly political for a summer blockbuster and sees Star Trek return to the allegorical story telling for which it is famous.

The movie acts as a metaphor for America’s descent into moral ambiguity following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The hunt for John Harrison is analagous to the search for Bin Laden and the debate about whether to launch photon torpedoes at the Klingon home world is relevant to current debates regarding the morality of drone strikes.

The film concludes with Kirk realising that he lost perspective following the terrorist attack on Starfleet. He then rededicates himself to science and peaceful exploration and begins the famous five year mission, to explore strange new worlds and to seek out new life. The title “Into Darkness” refers to the moral state of American foreign policy following 9/11 (fear, vengeance, anger, and violence) and the final scenes state that it’s time row back from this.

Star Trek Into Darkness opens with Kirk debating on whether to violate the prime directive in order to rescue Spock whose life hangs in the balance as he tries to save an entire civilisation from an erupting volcano. Roddenberry would be proud of these aspects of the film.

Much like the first film, Into Darkness moves at a fast pace and has a lot of leavening humour courtesy of Simon Pegg as Scotty. The special effects work is outstanding, particularly the scenes with Spock in the volcano. I also really enjoyed the beautiful musical score from Michael Giacchino who cleverly riffs on existing themes from Jerry Goldsmith and Alexander Courage. He also cements his own Star Trek theme, providing a musical identity for the modern movies.

Chris Pine was excellent as Kirk and the film showed a Kirk who was quite similar to the portrayal in Season One of the original series. There were some great moments between Kirk and Spock, in particular I enjoyed the scene where Kirk confesses to Spock that he has no idea of what to do and you could really sense the burden of command. Cumberpatch was excellent as the villan, although I thought the casual viewer might have needed a little more back-story to really appreciate his character. All of the supporting cast were excellent, particularly Alice Eve and the hawkish Admiral Marcus, played by Peter Weller.This is where my main criticism of Into Darkness would lie, the film is great for trekkies like me, but I wonder if the general audience fully appreciated Cumberpatch’s character – which I can’t reveal here without spoiling the film. There are a lot of easter eggs for the trekkie in this film, but it’s sometimes hard to be immersed in the film when you are constantly thinking how clever some of the inter contextual references are. But maybe that’s my problem – I saw it with a couple of non-trekkies and they were able to follow the film just fine.

I enjoyed the plot of the film, although how much you enjoy it might depend on your appreciation of homage. That said, I did find some story logic problems with the movie in that some aspects could have been better explained (the novellisation fills in some of the gaps).

If you enjoy homage, this scene is great…

I didn’t quite enjoy the film as much as the 2009 movie – it tried hard to pull on the heartstrings in some scenes, but it never achieved the big emotional impact like the death of Kirks father in ST09 for instance. I also thought that the last thirty minutes were very much in the mold of a generic action movie and I would have preferred some more talky character scenes. Some of the dialog in the early part of the movie was supremely well written and the actors rose to the challenge well.

All in all though, I think that this is JJ Abrams best directed movie, and the story flowed very well. I felt that the vignettes in the opening sequences of the previous movie led to a staccato feel to that film. Star Trek Into Darkness was an action romp in the vein of Indiana Jones rather than the bleak and brooding Dark Night that the trailers had suggested. For the next film, I’d like to see the crew exploring a strange new world and I think that it is not necessary to have a ‘big bad’ as the previous two movies have had.

In summary then, Star Trek Into Darkness has a pleasingly relevant theme, is visually superb, well acted and has a terrific musical score.

Rating 7/10

 

Man of Steel film review

Man of Steel opens with a lengthy expository sequence set on Krypton as Jor-El, played by Russell Crowe prepares to launch his son to Earth. Crowe is a terrible actor, not helped by portentous dialog such as “The world is about to come to an end”, which one imagines took numerous takes to say with a straight face.

Henry Cavill is quite good as Superman, certainly he has a physical presence and charisma. Amy Adams as Lois Lane also puts in a nice performance, with a feisty and confident turn. Sadly, she too suffers from some awful dialog, for example when facing a General, she asks if everyone has “finished measuring dicks”. In the next scene, when she is shown to her room, she asks “What if I need to tinkle?”. Does this sound like the same character?

Supes – as Clark Kent is pretty grumpy for most of the film’s first half as he tries to slide by without getting noticed. Eventually, Zod shows up and he has to suit up to prevent the Earth from being terraformed into a New Krypton.

This leads to interminable sequences of super-fights, with huge collateral damage. Over and over, we witness super people being chucked through buildings. Right at the end of the movie, Superman really cares about saving three people who are put in harm’s way by General Zod, but he didn’t try to stop sky-scrapers from tumbling down and he thought nothing of throwing Zod through concrete building supports or through inhabited buildings.

Dark and gritty, I miss the camp fun from the earlier film. Where is the joie de vivre?

The constant super fights are patently ridiculous since the S-Man ad Zod are both pretty near invulnerable, which turns the battles into pointless scenes of impotent fury. The best turn in the movie is provided by Kevin Costner, who adds some humanity to the proceedings.

The film boasts some beautiful design work and superior special effects sequences. However, the musical score is terrible, intruding on dialog and constantly blasting the audience with honking bass notes. Hans Zimmers score is totally inappropriate for Superman and I was craving the beautiful music of John Williams by the end.

This version of Superman takes itself way too seriously, its disjointed, over-long and the plot is a confused mess. The film is an action spectacular, yet it’s a depressingly hollow experience, for it is bereft of both heart and humour. Do yourself a favour and rent the definitive Superman the Movie instead.

Rating: 3/10

bIngh mughwI’

actions speak louder than words…

The title of this post is in Klingon, which you can now translate using Bing translator! Klingon was first developed as a proper language by Ph. D. Marc Okrand for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Okrand released a novelty book ‘The Klingon Dictionary’ in 1995, which has since sold more than 250,000 copies.

If you’re one of the few people who own a Windows phone then you can enjoy converting phrases to Klingon using the Translator app for Windows Phones. Today is a good day to talk it seems.

Star Trek: Film Review

‘This is not your father’s Star Trek,’ proclaimed one of the trailers for the 2009 Star Trek movie.  This counterfactual and somewhat tired statement rubbed some in the Trek community up the wrong way. It’s a specious tagline because actually, this is your fathers Star Trek.

For evidence, just check out this piece of dialog- which could just as easily come from the classic 1966 show as the 2009 movie.

Leonard “Bones” McCoy: Permission to speak freely, sir?
Spock: I welcome it.
Leonard “Bones” McCoy: Do you? OK, then. Are you out of your Vulcan mind? Are you making a logical choice, sending Kirk away? Probably. But, the right one? You know, back home we have a saying: “If you’re gonna ride in the Kentucky Derby, you don’t leave your prize stallion in the stable.”

The 2009 reboot is far closer in terms of spirit to the gaudy, fun sci-fi action format espoused by classic Trek. The task of re-casting archetypal heroes like Kirk, Spock and McCoy must have been daunting. Yet Pine, Quinto and Urban all take to the roles like they were born to them, capturing the essence of the characters without being mere parodies or ciphers. When Spock turns down the offer to study at the Vulcan Science Academy, his ‘Live long and prosper’ put down is a great character moment, but one can’t imagine Nimoy delivering the line in quite that way.

ILM provided superb special effects for Star Trek 2009

This is the most cinematic of all the Trek movies, from the epic and emotional opening sequence to the action packed finale. Abrams kinetic direction, where he literally bangs on the side of the camera lends a sense of urgency to the film. Incidentally, I like his use of lens flares too because of the sense of immediacy they create. The action sequences are superb, but unlike the recent Star Wars films, its the characters that drive the movie.

From a technical standpoint, the film is excellent – with Scot Chambliss providing superb design work and ILM excelling with strong visuals. Michael Giacchino provides the film with a suitably bombastic score that has echoes of previous Treks. The End Credits sequence superbly reinterprets Alexander Courage’s immortal television theme, providing a highly emotional payoff to the Trek faithful.

The films stroke of genius is to set the movie in an alternate timeline to the previous Star Trek series. This alternate timeline, created by having Nero destroy the USS Kelvin, in no way diminishes the Trek’s that have come before. What is achieves is to free up the writers from the constraints of 40 years worth of mythology. It means that Star Trek can be unpredictable and exciting again. One of the big problems with the cancelled Star Trek: Enterprise prequel was that it had to contend with all the future history that it could not contradict.

The film is not flawless however, for a start, the film’s protagonist is poorly drawn and his motivation seems muddled and unclear. The narrative flow should not have been better structured, without having Nimoy’s Spock provide a convenient expository info-dump midway through the movie. Furthermore, Kirk’s meeting with Spock was far to much of a coincidence and should have been contrived.

For me, the best Star Trek’s are the ones that combine a proper hard Science-Fiction concept with Roddenberry’s humanist values. Star Trek 2009 is primarily an exciting action-movie, but it does chart the emotional journey of Star Trek’s most beloved character – Spock. By the end of the movie, Pine and Quinto emulate the same connection as Kirk and Spock as played by Shatner and Nimoy.

Kirk and Spock check out the new Apple store…

Trekkers will pointlessly argue over the minutia, arguing that the Enterprise should have been constructed in space and that its warp nacelles are too large. Such arguments are of no consequence the majority of filmgoers and are trivial at best. This Star Trek honors the original series’ legacy by harnessing its best qualities – it’s characters, futuristic setting, ground-breaking effects and action format.

Rating: 8/10

Frustration incarnate

loading……………………………….

last night I tried to book a car parking space, said task should’ve taken about thirty minutes. But that was without reckoning on my contumacious web-browser and ponderous Internet service provision. I may have a fiber optic connection, but I’d have been better off sending smoke signals or tapping out my message in morse code than suffering the infernal sight of that loading web-page symbol.

Finally, when the webpage had loaded, I clicked on the button which would allow me to select the make and model of car that I wished to park. A flash form popped up, which my internet security decided was surely a threat. Then, like a precocious three-year old who refuses to stop asking where children come from, the internet security software kept repeatedly popping up to ask if I wanted to allow the action. Of course I want to allow the action goddamnit! I’ve told you so three times already.

Maybe Kirk’s experiencing the rage associated with using flash-based websites.

Yes! the forms up on the screen and I’m gonna fill it out now – success surely awaits…..Gagh! I hit the ‘submit’ button, which inflicted more pain and suffering as windows popped up with a question about whether I’d like to ‘save or cancel’ downloading a ‘.jsop’ file. Curse you, flash-based website, with your fancy fonts and clear and clean user interface. If you’re a web-developer, I urge you to eschew flashy-pants web sites in favour of clear, simple and clean HTML coding.

Eventually, after Chrome, Firefox and Safari (on a shiny i-phone) had all failed I resorted to the evil Microsoft corporation’s Internet Explorer, which had no problems at all in completing the booking.

Who would have thought that organising a trip to see Star Trek Into Darkness in London could be so much hard work?

Ray Harryhausen

”They were considered B pictures because they were made on a tight budget. But we outlived many of the A pictures made at the same time.” – Ray Harryhausen

I heard on the news today that Ray Harryhausen had died, aged 92. He was an influential and inspirational film-maker.

Ray’s stroke of genius was to use split screen photography and rear projection so that stop motion models could ‘interact’ with live action footage.

This made for a more convincing effect and was cheaper because expensive minature sets were no longer needed. To learn more about Dynamation, click here.

My favourite Harryhausen movie is ‘Jason and the Argonauts’, which for me, is the ultimate lazy Sunday afternoon film. Of course, people say it’s a Harryhausen film because of the wonderful creature’s in the movie, forgetting that it was directed by Don Chaffey. I also suspect that the leading man in the movie is irrelevant to most audiences appreciation of the film.

In a world where CG can make any fantasy come to life on the screen with startling realism, it’s important to note that Harryhausen was not attempting to duplicate reality. Although the clay models were created to seem like living, breathing creatures, Harryhausen was looking for a stylistic and unnerving effect, saying that “If you make fantasy too real, it loses the quality of a dream.”

Although CGI has made stop-motion obsolete in major live-action motion pictures, the technique still holds a visual appeal and charm for animated movies. Aardman Animations famously use stop motion in their wonderful Wallace and Gromit films. In their recent ‘Pirates’ movie, they combine stop motion with CG imagery to great effect. Other recent stop motion movies include ‘The Fantastic Mr Fox’, the excellent ‘Coraline’ and Tim Burton’s ‘Frankenweenie’.

I’ll give Ray have the final word in this article…

I’m another snowball. Willis H. O’Brien started the snowball, then I picked it up, then ILM picked it up and now the computer generation is picking it up. Where it will end, I don’t know. Maybe in holography, although I’m not sure I’d like a grotesque monster appearing in 3-D in my living room. – Ray Harryhausen

Kinder Surprise

It’s been a while since I’ve composed a non-film review post, but inspiration can come in the strangest of forms – in this case egg-shaped. For you see, whilst hosting a dinner party with some friends, the conversation naturally migrated from house prices and furniture towards the Kinder egg. OK, so a guest brought along some Kinder eggs as a novelty treat – and that’s what prompted the discussion.

Anyhow, it turns out that the humble Kinder egg is banned in the US.

Mistaken for a grenade?

So why eggsactly is it banned? the Kinder Egg is banned under the 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act which forbids “the sale of any candy that has embedded in it a toy or trinket.” Apparently, it transpires that you can be fined $2,500 for every egg that is imported into the States!

For my deprived US readers, once you’ve broken through the thin chocolatey shell of a Kinder egg, there’s a large plastic container inside that contains various mis-shapen lumps of plastic that come together to form a car, plane or other such trinket. The size of the plastic container prohibits young children from choking on it.

My Kinder egg contained a Looney Tunes figure, but this one (thank you Google Image Search) is more like what I remember from being a kid (note the two halfs of the shell no longer separate).

Maybe there’s a money making opportunity here to market some ‘I survived the Kinder egg’ novelty T-shirts.

In the UK, we have an expression ‘Health and safety gone mad’, which seems to be well and truly alive in America as well. This is one of those stories that one assumes to be an Urban Legend – but it’s true.

Addendum: It’s widely reported (Wikipedia and other sites) that there have been 7 deaths attributed to choking on a Kinder egg. That’s 7 deaths in 20 years – worldwide. Compare that to the hot-dog, which kills 5 children per year in the US (source: http://stats.org/stories/2010/choking_hot_dog_feb23_10.html). So, extrapolating how much more dangerous a hot dog is than a Kinder egg, we can just say 5×20=100 and 100/7=14.285. Clearly it would be palpable nonsence to ban the hot dog, even though it is responsible for approximately 14 times as many child deaths over a 20 year time span.