POSSESSION IS NINE TENTHS OF THE LAW.
And . . . er . . . what kind of possession are we talking about?
Category: Film and TV
The Hunt for Gollum
You may have already seen this elsewhere online, but if you haven't, it's a remarkable accomplishment. Budget of less than $5,000. (And just to answer a question you may wonder about for a second, no those are not the same actors.)
Trek Review: Spoiler Version
Okay, here we go for the spoiler-enriched version of my reaction to Star Trek.
Total spoilage will be in effect, so caveat lector.
Continued below the fold.
The Curse Is Broken . . . Maybe
Well, I finally got around to seeing the new Star Trek film–the first film I've seen in theaters in I don't know how long.
I know SDG has already covered this topic but . . . this is my blog, so here we go again.
I'll put spoilers in a forthcoming post and just have a few non-spoiler comments in this one.
The good news is that I basically liked the film.
It was fun.
It met my expectations, which were as follows: (1) I wanted it to be fun, (2) I wanted it to be a viable relaunch of the franchise, and (3) I wanted it to be fundamentally though not scrupulously faithful to the original.
I thought it substantially met those goals, so I liked it.
This is not to say that I hadn't been concerned. Some of the stuff seen in trailers had me worried. For example, the Kirk-Spock conflict depicted in the photo. That had me concerned. The film could have mindlessly ramped up the characters' emotions without providing a good reason for Spock's outburst. (Not unlike many episodes of the rebooted BSG, which over-milked the pathos factor).
Fortunately, there is a good reason Spock is blowing his stack in this picture. The conflict isn't overdone, and it works in context.
I understand that the film may not be to the taste of some die-hard fans of the original series. And that would be true no matter what for the simple reason that no movie is to everyone's tastes.
Personally, while I have a soft spot for TOS, I don't regard it–or any Trek series–as an artistic masterpiece. All of the series have some real stinkburgers as episodes (e.g., just to name one from each, TOS: Spock's Brain, TAS: The Terratin Incident, TNG: Skin of Evil, DS9: Sons of Mogh, VOY: Threshold, ENT: A Night In Sickbay). Some of them have many stinkburgers.
So I don't regard the original Trek as sacrosanct. The recasting doesn't bother me, as long as it's good recasting (and it seemed to be; especially Zachary Quinto as Spock).
Since the original Trek wasn't perfect, the new movie doesn't have to be perfect for me for it to be an okay successor.
There were things in it that didn't work for me (see forthcoming post). The movie does have plot holes and dumb things.
But on balance it's a fun film. It has lots of spectacle. A good treatment of the established characters (with one notable exception that some object to; see forthcoming post). It has some nice new and sorta-new characters. (In particular, I liked Captain Pike and Scotty's assistant.)
And it has this going for it: It's the best chance for more Star Trek that we're going to get.
Prior to this film, the franchise had gotten really, really stale. In the post-DS9 era the producers made mindblowingly bad decisions.
Voyager had horrendous problems, with the climax of many episodes simply being characters standing over consoles spouting technobabble in an elevated tone of voice, trying to create drama.
And though they started to turn it around in the third and especially the fourth season, Enterprise as a series was fundamentally blown from the get-go, with the producers not realizing what kind of story they needed to tell (the Romulan War, leading to the founding of the Federation). And that was before we got to the disastrous final episode.
The producers just completely didn't understand what they were doing.
As a result, they wore out the franchise. They painted it into a corner from which nothing could rescue it.
Except a reboot–a fresh start.
It's really hard to see how much more could have been done in the previous continuity and keep the franchise financially viable.
Theatrical film based on any of the previous series or a combination of them?
Not going to reach beyond the existing, shrunken fan base and thus not going to be financially successful.
New TV show?
In the previous continuity, what's left to do that would reach out beyond the existing, shrunken fanbase? Even telling the story of the founding of the Federation would be too close to ST:ENT (which is why that series' misfire is such a huge debacle; the producers blew their one chance to tell a pivotal story).
Any new ST series based on the old continuity would have almost certainly not made it as many seasons as ENT did.
Relaunching the franchise with a reboot was the logical way to go. (As JMS and Bryce Zabel had pointed out a few years ago.)
So I'm willing to cut the filmmakers some slack. I don't feel that I have to agree with all of their decisions (and I certainly don't expect them to honor every single bit of micro-level continuity from the previous shows–which didn't themselves honor their own micro-level continuity).
If they give me basically fun new Star Trek that holds the prospect of resulting in more basically fun new Star Trek, that'll be good enough.
This means that–maybe–the Star Trek Curse is broken.
The curse, stated in its strongest form, is that all of the odd numbered Star Trek movies are bad and all of the even numbered Star Trek movies are good.
Taken in a weaker form, the curse would be that all of the odd numbered Star Trek movies are lesser in quality and all of the even numbered ones are more good (or mo' better, as they say).
Up to this point, the strong form of the curse is arguable. Whether it's true depends on whether you regard any of 1 (V'Ger), 3 (Search for Spock), 5 (Search for God), 7 (Kirk Dies), and 9 (Insurrection) as technically, on-balance good or not.
But they're certainly not as good as 2 (Kahn), 4 (Whales), 6 (Berlin Wall Comes Down), 8 (First Contact), and 10 (Nemesis–weakest of the even numbered ones).
The curse in its weakened form is true . . . at least up to the newest film.
A lot of people might find the new Trek better than Nemesis, in which case we'd have an odd numbered film (technically, the new one would be Trek 11) that is better than an even one, in which case the curse would be broken.
But perhaps there is a way to reformulate it that would result in its still being true. How about this: Each odd numbered Star Trek film is weaker than the film that follows it.
In that case, the curse may still hold true. Thus far each odd film has been weaker than the one that followed it.
So the curse will hold true if J.J. Abrams and such can produce a sequel to this film that is even better.
Can they do it?
Now that the origin story is out of the way, I think there's a chance they can.
Caprica Pilot
For BSG fans going through withdrawal, the pilot movie for the prequel series Caprica is now out on DVD.
It hasn't aired on TV yet, and apparently won't for a while–and you'll have to wait till next year for the series itself to debut–but you can see the pilot on DVD.
Below are some thoughts on it. I'll keep the spoilers light, but just to protect those who don't want absolutely anything spoiled, I'll continue below the fold.
Yeah, I Can’t . . .
. . . tell you how many times I've been in exactly this situation with Mark Shea.
In Valen’s Name?
Down yonder, a reader writes:
Jimmy–I'm only a casual fan of B5, and haven't shelled out for the script books, so I won't ask you to go into detail about how the Sinclair version differs, but one speculation that's been bugging me for years:
Would the original series have ended with the end of "World Without End" (the Sinclair/Valen reveal)?
Hmmm. . . . I wonder. . . . Is it a spoiler if you reveal what would have happened on a show but didn't?
Oh, well. . . . Continued below the fold.
The End of Galactica
The first part of the Battlestar Galactica finale (Daybreak, Part I) has now aired, and next Friday will have the two-hour conclusion of the story.
I've had some requests for comment on the direction that the story has taken, and it seemed like this would be an opportune time to offer some.
To avoid spoilers for those who haven't seen the relevant eps, yet, I'll continue below the fold.
And the Final Cylon Is . . .
The final ten episodes of Battlestar Galactica start airing this Friday, and the producers plan to answer a bunch of questions, some of which have been around since the beginning of the show and some of which were only recently introduced: What happened to Earth? What are the Virtual "Head" beings (e.g., Head Six, Head Baltar) that only some people see? Can Human and Cylon live together? Who lives and who dies? And, of course, who is the final Cylon?
I'm going to tell you.
Or at least I'm going to tell you who I think it is.
I've made a significant number of BSG predictions before and gotten more than my share right, so I'm going to put my cards on the table here and tell you who I think the clues point to.
If I can shift from a cards metaphor to a dice metaphor, sometimes you have to roll the hard six, so here goes.
Continued below the fold for those who don't want to read this speculation.
Decent Films doings: A good year for family films, part 2
SDG here with a follow-up to my June post on family films of 2008.
As the year draws to a close, it looks like my sense of 2008 as a good year for family films was on the money. In fact, the premise of my June post became a full-fledged article which appeared first in the December issue of Catholic World Report and is now available in an abridged version at Decent Films:
Family Films Move Forward in 2008
Unfortunately, many of the films that, in June, I was looking forward to hopefully didn't pan out. I knew some of them wouldn't pan out, but I was hoping for more than we got.
The one spectacular exception, of course, was Wall-E, the crown jewel of the year's family films, as I hoped it would be.
And today, a worthwhile film opens that wasn't even on my radar in June: The Tale of Despereaux.
At least one other film, Bolt turned out to be better than I expected. OTOH, City of Ember turned out to be a visually stylish disappointment, kind of cool but not very good. Journey to the Center of the Earth was a little more fun, but also not exactly good.
Fly Me to the Moon was barely a flyweight contribution (and the buzz I heard on Armstrong's involvement was wrong — it was Buzz Aldrin who voiced himself, which makes a lot more sense on multiple levels). And The Half-Blood Prince didn't even arrive — it was postponed until next year.
Still, between Wall-E, Horton Hears a Who, Kung Fu Panda, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Prince Caspian and The Tale of Despereaux, plus a raft of tol'able also-rans… not to mention, for families with older kids, The Express and Son of Rambow… definitely a good year, all in all.