Category: Culture

The League of Bearded Catholics

Hey, Tim Jones, here.

For those who like their Catholic Culture full and neatly brushed, The League of Bearded Catholics is here to provide a convenient excuse constructive outlet for testosterone-infused merry making.

A hearty and hirsute celebration of the literary tradition of Tolkien, Lewis, Belloc and Chesterton.

TLBC_LogoColor 

"Break the conventions. Keep the commandments."

– G.K. Chesterton

The Curse Is Broken . . . Maybe

Conflict 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.

Ah!… I See My Bribe Paid Off

Tim Jones, here.

This is about a week late, but I wanted to let JA.O readers know that several pieces of my work are
inexplicably featured in the current edition of a well-respected online literary
journal, The Christendom Review.

This has been in the works for a while, and the actual date of publication sort of snuck up on me.

Many thanks to William Luse and to editor Richard Barnett for the
opportunity to be featured in this fine magazine. The Christendom Review also regularly showcases some
great poetry, essays, editorials, etc…

Don't worry, I didn't really bribe anybody. What I did do was send an e-mail saying, "This is a nice literary magazine you got going here… it'd be a shame if anything happened to it…"

Visit Tim Jones' Daily Painting Blog…

… as well as his Daily Spouting-Off Blog Old World Swine.

Caprica Pilot

Caprica_city

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.

Continue reading “Caprica Pilot”

Kindle Question

Amazon_kindle_21 My eyes are bad–so much so that when I go into the optometrist's office and hand him my glasses at the beginning of the examination, he takes one look at the lenses and says, "Myyyyyy! You *are* nearsighted, *aren't* you!"

I'm also dyslexic.

And did I mention that my family gets cataracts really early?

So I like using audiobooks as much as possible. I'm a subscriber to Audible, and I've blogged before about making my own audiobooks with TextAloud and AT&T Natural Voices, but most books aren't available via Audible, and scanning a book so I can use TextAloud on it is a really time-consuming process.


I was very interested when Amazon announced the first version of its Kindle e-book reader, but it didn't have text-to-speech, so I didn't buy one.


The new Kindle 2, though, does have text-to-speech (even if the voice isn't that great). I almost ordered one, which would allow me to hear numerous books that aren't available in audiobook form.


Unfortunately, Amazon quickly announced–after pressure from publishers and authors–that they were giving publishers and authors the ability to turn off the Kind's text-to-speech function for particular books.


The theory was that this might violate copyrights (wrong!–for a whole host of reasons) and that it might cut into audiobook sales.


I don't buy that because the Kindle voice is pathetic compared to a professionally done audiobook, which you can get for almost the same price as a Kindle book from Audible. Given the choice of listening to an annoying voice reading a book and spending a couple of dollars more for a professional reading, I'd take the latter any day.


And–guess what–you can download Audible audiobooks right onto your Kindle.


So I think Amazon is being shortsighted, and so do a bunch of my fellow shortsighted people. In fact many blind, dyslexic, and other reading-impaired folks have been protesting about this and starting petitions.



I hope they succeed in getting Amazon to change its policy, but in the meantime I've still got a question: How useful would a Kindle 2 be to me with its publisher-controlled text-to-speech function?


If Amazon is going to allow this feature to be disabled then what they should do–but haven't so far as I can tell–is list on a book's page whether or not the text-to-speech feature is enabled. I'd be mighty honked off if I paid ten bucks for a Kindle book download and then discovered I couldn't listen to it.


As a fallback to being able to predict in an individual book's case whether it's listenable, it would at least help to have an idea of how many publishers are turning off the text-to-speech function. It would be one thing if only 5% of them do, but it'd be another thing entirely if 95% of them do.


So I'm hoping there are some Kindle 2 people–or others in the know–who can give me a sense of how widespread the "No speech for you!" problem is on the Kindle.


Any help?