New Star Trek

I stay away from movies that simply create formats to blow things up.

If it ain't about life and death it ain't worh watching, reading or viewing.

Originally posted by StTito
Holy Crap that was the best piece of pop culture I have seen in a long time!

Best review to date:
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/trekkies_bash_new_star_trek_film

thanks for the link to the onion review -- really very funny. And true, as I've already heard from the Trekkies around my US EPA office almost the same things offered up with a straight face -- if no costume.

At some point in life, it seems one ought to stop mistaking commercial pop entertainment as something important. Then, one really ought to get serious about that which is real, happening now, so as to make a contribution to the future of that which is important.

It is hard for me to imagine how being devoted to TV shows and movies leads to any of that. There is little enough time to look outside just the science and politics of what one does for a living. Why waste it on useless, recycled old pop entertainment that really hasn't changed all that much since H. Rider Haggard began the genre?

Originally posted by badmoon
I stay away from movies that simply create formats to blow things up.

If it ain't about life and death it ain't worh watching, reading or viewing.

It has been formally judicially noticed as a fact by a judge in an important intellectual property case that there are only 37 film plots that Hollywood has and will produce. The industry merely remakes and recombines these 37 stories. The case was Art Buchwald's lawsuit against Arsenio Hall for stealing his idea for Hall's boring film about an African prince in America. Thus, the US court system has made it clear that there is nothing new coming out of the major studios -- you have to look at indie films, which Hollywood looks on as a form of "minor league" tryout venue, before they invest mega bucks in a film team to produce the next summer blockbuster.
Just as there is a concept called a chess ladder, there is also a film industry ladder to climb. It all comes down to putting asses in the seats.

Originally posted by Scriabin
It has been formally judicially noticed as a fact by a judge in an important intellectual property case that there are only 37 film plots that Hollywood has and will produce. The industry merely remakes and recombines these 37 stories. The case was Art Buchwald's lawsuit against Arsenio Hall for stealing his idea for Hall's boring film about an African prin ...[text shortened]... re is also a film industry ladder to climb. It all comes down to putting asses in the seats.

Indie films, so to speak, is about all I see.

Originally posted by divegeester
Reading your posts here makes me wonder why you went to see a film called STAR TREK in the first place; perhaps you were conducting research into plebiscite entertainment or just slumming?

Have you never watched any of the series or seen the trailer or read a review, or indeed just thought to yourself “this looks like a load of guano, I don't think I'll bother wasting some of my money; I'll go to the library instead"?

could you enlighten me on what "plebiscite entertainment" might be?

Of course I watched the original series -- and the 2nd series, and some of DS9 and some of Voyager and a couple of the new Enterprise programs, until I got thoroughly fed up with it.

Sci fi is great when it contains genuinely interesting scientific ideas, and when it is funny. As soon as it begins to take itself seriously, it becomes tedious.

Note that many sci fi films could have been done as a different formula, i.e., a straight up thriller, an action adventure, a mystery, or a western.

In fact, I thought Firefly an entertaining show because it made no pretense at science, was quite upfront about stealing the Western genre formula for a TV show, but made it funny enough to overcome the obvious downsides to both the sci fi and western TV show formulas.

That scene of the captain sitting naked in the desert musing on how "well" things had turned out (having been tricked by an attractive woman) was quite a good scene.

Originally posted by Scriabin
once again the hide in the bushes critic with your sniping -- it is all personal with you.

More tedious personal abuse. What a surprise!

Originally posted by Scriabin
weighing in on things of which you have nothing substantive to add -- merely commenting on what others choose to say, reveals your deep psychological need to appear as a superior intellect. why are you so insecure? why have you nothing to say about sci fi or star trek or Heinlein? I think it is because you use this medium to substitute for the social positi ...[text shortened]... tern and one clearly unworthy of anyone so pretentious about his intellectual powers as you are.

And still he goes on. More and more tedious, unfunny personal abuse wrapped up in bizarre psychobabble. How predictable.

😴

Originally posted by FMF
And still he goes on. More and more tedious, unfunny personal abuse wrapped up in bizarre psychobabble. How predictable.

😴

twit

Originally posted by FMF
Actually, Scriabin, [St.Tito] landed a genuine blow [...] It made me go back and re-read the post he was responding to [...] St.Tito's response was something you probably needed to answer properly rather than with your trademark, tedious personal abuse.

Originally posted by Scriabin
...your deep psychological need to appear as a superior intellect. why are you so insecure? [...] I think it is because you use this medium to substitute for the social position you cannot achieve any other way. How sad. [...] a sick pattern and one clearly unworthy of anyone so pretentious about his intellectual powers as you are. [...] so your motive in weighing in appears mere malice, which is what I've come to expect from you. for someone who purports to be such an intellect, you really are a small minded person, did you know that?

Yet another thread Scriabinized. 😴

Originally posted by Scriabin
wow, what a deep literary mind for a product of the shallow end of the gene pool.

why would I now, as an adult, read anything by Heinlein, let alone something that I read as a child? He was a terrible writer, a really poor man's Hemingway, and Hemingway was no walk in the park, either.

you can read all sorts of artistic crap you like into that film, b ...[text shortened]... Even Bob Hope did a better job, and that, of course, is not setting the bar particularly high.

All adjectives and no reasoning. I see your view of cinema and directing is as deep as your views on the best ice-cream flavour.

Originally posted by Palynka
All adjectives and no reasoning. I see your view of cinema and directing is as deep as your views on the best ice-cream flavour.

Major studio cinema is a business, not an art form. It exists and is judged by how many asses fill the seats, how much money it brings in, not its aesthetics. The evidence for that is in your news medium. People vote on what they think the best cinema products are with their rear ends.

fans project onto these products what they want to see, as the product is projected onto a screen. It is all light that reflects back on the viewer. There isn't any substance to it.

when the budget for a film goes above a certain level, and all modern sci fi flicks are above that mark, it becomes a mainstream, commercial product subject to the jurisdiction and control of myriad suits.

for an example of a film that is the opposite of all this, see the film by my cousin which won the Oscar some years ago. It is a documentary called Twin Towers -- the story of two brothers, one a NYC cop, the other a NYC fireman. That film had something to it.

snip
Terminator Salvation isn't being terminated exactly. But it is being denied.

Ben Stiller's Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, not the latest Terminator film, as projected, was winning the Memorial Day weekend box office. And it wasn't all that close.

Smithsonian is estimated to gross $53.5 million from Friday-Sunday; Salvation is down for $43 million for the same stretch.

Four-day weekend estimates will be out tomorrow.

"I think most people felt Terminator was going to win the weekend," Chris Aronson, an exec for Smithsonian's Fox, said today. "I think it's a testament to comedy is king."

Salvation, meanwhile, might be a testament to what a good job Star Trek is doing.

Or to put it another way: Restarting a franchise isn't as easy, or big, as the $184 million-grossing Trek is making it look.

If estimates hold, Salvation's initial three-day weekend gross will be $1 million less than Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines took in six summers ago. Since opening Thursday, one full day ahead of Smithsonian, it's only made about $3 million more than the comedy and looks to fall short of its reputed $200 million budget on the domestic side.

Drilling down into the numbers:

• Smithsonian is Stiller's biggest-opening live-action (read: non-Madagascar) movie ever. And it's more than $20 million bigger than the original Night at the Museum's Friday-Sunday debut in 2006.

• On Friday, Smithsonian's margin of victory over Salvation was slim: Less than $500,000 separated the two movies. On Saturday, Smithsonian's business jumped 30 percent; Salvation's dipped about 2 percent—and the rout was on.

• Star Trek held well—again. It took in another $22 million and leapfrogged last weekend's champ, Angels & Demons ($21.4 million), for third place.

unsnip

Originally posted by Palynka
All adjectives and no reasoning. I see your view of cinema and directing is as deep as your views on the best ice-cream flavour.

major sci fi talents were and are very critical of Heinlein -- among them John Brunner, who decried what ails all of Heinlein's writing. Heinlein's books are generally nothing more than a vehicle for Heinlein's political views. Brunner compared Starship Troopers to a "Victorian children's book."

Anthony Boucher, founder of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, remarked that Heinlein had "forgotten to insert a story."

Alexei Panshin complained that the novel was overly simplistic—"[an] account of the making of a [Marine] … and nothing more"—and that the characters were simply mouthpieces for Heinlein.

Richard Geib complained about the almost complete lack of sexuality among the characters and the absence of any serious romance.

Joe Haldeman, a Vietnam veteran and author of the anti-war Hugo- and Nebula-winning science fiction novel The Forever War, similarly complained that Starship Troopers unnecessarily glorifies war.

Heinlein never served in combat. He spent World War II as a civilian doing Research and Development at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

Originally posted by Scriabin
major sci fi talents were and are very critical of Heinlein -- among them John Brunner, who decried what ails all of Heinlein's writing. Heinlein's books are generally nothing more than a vehicle for Heinlein's political views. Brunner compared Starship Troopers to a "Victorian children's book."

Anthony Boucher, founder of The Magazine of Fantasy & Scie ...[text shortened]... rld War II as a civilian doing Research and Development at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

I think you are expecting way too much from a movie about giant insects somehow throwing asteroids at presumably faster than light speed and with remarkable accuracy at a planet on the other side of the galaxy. Can't you just switch your head off and enjoy the fun?

I presume you wouldn't expect to be challenged by the Spice Girls movie, Mama Mia or The Mask?

Have you seen any of the movies I mentioned in a previous post? Watch movies to challenge yourself when you're in the mood and watch a load of fun nonsense when you don't.

I bought Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood (if you don't know of this film, it's one of Kurosawa's masterpieces) and Zombie Strippers. Different movies for different occasions.

Originally posted by Wheely

I bought Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood (if you don't know of this film, it's one of Kurosawa's masterpieces) and Zombie Strippers. Different movies for different occasions.

I'd like to see a Zombie Strippers directed at the pace of Throne of Blood.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
I'd like to see a Zombie Strippers directed at the pace of Throne of Blood.

I haven't seen Zombie Strippers yet and to be honest I'm not expecting too much from it which is probably for the best but I like the cut of your jib!