Goes to Star Trek.
WOW! this is probably old news to most of you, but if there are other fans of the one and only, i.e. the original Trek, out there who have avoided this movie, having grown exceeeeeedingly gunshy over the past million years of weak ripoffs…I can’t over-recommend this movie. It would be good with just the casting, which cast very believable “young” versions of all our beloved characters. Good with just the SFX, which were beautiful and make me regret not seeing it on the big screen. It would be good with just the caliber of acting of every single speaking part. Good with just the directing and cutting, which made for a slick, seamless, experience, with a superb balance of tension and comic relief, good with just the sound which for once kept the sound effects eerily proper for a space-based story (the only one to use it as effectively that I can think of was 2001) For the sound balance which, such a thought, kept the focus on the (gasp) DIALOG.
Of course, they could do that because they didn’t have a single syllable to disguise…
Because the real star of this movie is the writing. OMG. One of the best parts of any story about characters is the way they meet and how the relationships develop. One of the hardest things to do is a prequel to a well-established universe. They solved the prequel problem brilliantly and believably and just allowed us to sit back and revel in those magical “beginnings” I don’t want to say too much, because I don’t want to ruin it for those who haven’t yet seen it, but bottom line, it was one of the best movie experiences I’ve ever had.
I wish I knew a bunch of people who haven’t seen it so I could watch it with them and share the joy all over again, sort of like we did with Star Wars.
Hmmm…I wonder if OSG has seen it…..
I think I probably saw that three times in the theater (something I hadn’t done since I saw the original Matrix *cough* number of times) but I did go see it each time with fresh people. Heh. Snap. Now I want to watch it again.
When I originally heard about it I was ready for it to suck just as bad as the last zillion Trek movies. I was born a Trek fan, but I have too much taste to accept crap just because they’ve assembled the old crew one more time (many who have to dust off their already suspect acting) for a worse-than-made-for-tv-movie script. I am a huge JJ Abrams fangirl, but even at that I felt like the horse had been drug out and beat enough. I kept telling myself Battlestar Galactica’s remake turned out to be good. Doctor Who’s restart turned out to be good for the most part. But the horror that has been Trek for so many years told me to fear the worst.
The little news bits coming out had me rolling my eyes (“Hey, they didn’t meet at the academy!”), but as the cast started getting assembled and I started hearing things Abrams would be quoted saying I started to slide over to the 50/50 chance of suckage. Then the first trailer came out and I was blown away. I was probably 90/10 thinking it wasn’t going to suck (trailers have tricked me before). I was starting to worry that it would be good and no one would give it a chance.
THEN, when I was crying during the first ten minutes and saw everyone else was too I knew it would be a hit. (also, I geeked out over the submarine-like interiors of that first ship and the cute little crew that would stop working and salute when the captain ran by to get to the shuttle…really, it doesn’t take too much to make me happy.)
I would be completely remiss if I didn’t recommend the other scifi film I’ve enjoyed recently: MOON. The one with Sam Rockwell that came out last year. It is old school scifi of the best kind and even has the model creator from the first Alien film (The guy who did the Nostromo) doing its special effects. It is a really quiet thinky film that gave me some hope for scifi film making. Tiny budget, excellent script, and no stupid blue cat people.
I haven’t seen it! come visit the Eastern Association and we can watch it together! I’ve put Moon in the netflix queue.
No, Jane, I haven’t seen it. Sheji had many rave reviews though & I would liked to see it, as well as “Alice”.
Yes! ROAD TRIP TO THE EASTERN ASSOCIATION….!!!! (although I really would want to fly). Koki, I miss you all!
Sweetbo: My :cough: movie was Star Wars. When that came out, we found everybody who hadn’t seen it and dragged them to it. In the early days, that made for LOTS of excuses to go back to the theater.
Koki: Oh….if only I could! But no more roadtrips for a while. I’ve got to get books up on CC! And the pond is back to life (yay!) which means time to get out, weed, and start little plants. And if NetFlix has only one copy of Moon, we’re going to be arm-wrestling for it.
OSG…c’mon over. We’ll watch it here. You’ve GOT to see your cousin in this one. Uhuru’s roommate. Tooooo cute.
This Star Trek got my daughter so revved up that she’s borrowed dvds of the original ST to watch how it all started. She doesn’t even mind the poor special effects. It’s all about the characters and stories for her. I have to check to see if we got the dvd of the new ST…if not, guess I’ll put that on the ‘to buy’ list.
Any news about a sequel yet?
Barbara
I bought a Blu-Ray player on Thursday just to watch this movie. It was amazing.
@OSG
It came with a digital copy which is now on my computer. You probably won’t have a couple hours to kill at Norwescon, but if you did, we could watch it. ;)
One has heard that a sequel is greenlit, but no script yet. I remember my mom telling all us kids: Hey, there’s this show I think you would all like to watch. Then 2andahalf seasons of trying to figure out what was going to happen next week based on the trailers (especially fun during the deathoftheweek phase the writers went through). And the Saturday morning cartoon they came out with? FUN
Those days lead directly to these, still wondering why and how. BTW, StarWars at the old single screen theatres, with the line wrapped around the building? I saw it 7 times, and it was never old.
I HOPE they can manage as good a script. I have real hopes, if they have the same crew writing/editing. Wheeee….
We bought a Blu-Ray player yesterday….the old DVD player sploded friday night…..actually more of a whimper. I’m pretty impressed with what it does with my old DVD’s……I’ll put Star Trek on the list….have not even heard of MOON…time for some research. Three movies which I have somehow linked in my mind…..Children of Men….District 9……and 9……..perhaps because of their haunting visuals and view of the future?
)
I *loved* the original Star Trek….yeah the effects were cheesy even for the time…..but Gene Rodenberry was not afraid to explore new ideas.
And Star Wars…..I will never forget watching that star destroyer come across the screen….one of film’s great opening shots….we had a very hard time convincing Prog, who was about seven at the time, that no they did not go up to space to film the exteriors……thus the first time in getting back up and making of material……..(Fantasy 30 yrs later: tossing the unsavable Millenium Falcon in the dumptster…before it hits it restores itself and jumps into space.
Our problem is, our “old” TV has no hdmi input, so it’s no good getting a Blu-Ray. WAH! It’ll die…someday…but by that time, there’ll probably be some new format out anyway, and unlike CC’s DRM-free books, we’ll HAVE to buy a new copy, and all those actors will get more money and the writers will probably get a pittance, if anything. Sheesh. Our priorities are weird.
Gawd I wish we could afford the time and $$ to go to Norwescon…. But we’ve got to do taxes and get more books up on CC before you guys forget what we’re here for…Sigh….
If you like old school, hard scifi you’ll like MOON. The trailer is up here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twuScTcDP_Q
I liked the new Star Trek but I had problems watching until I figured out that it was an alternate dimension Trek. That made it work for me.
I was alaways a Star Wars guy, my daughter gave me some Star Wars bobble heads last week.
Hey Jane, your episode of The Next Generation is on Syfy tonight at 9:00.
Hi, Bret!
Oh, goodies! I missed it….
You know…I wish they’d just give us credit when they steal from us.
Sigh…They credit the guy who empties the garbage, but not the one whose story they swiped. 
Nice, huh? No wonder they’ve never had a problem with people writing fanfic. 
I LOVED the original SW. Empire was a great middle-trilogy story, really what I would call the best of the entire series, story-telling-wise… and I thought the end of the original trilogy sucked pond water. The loss of Leigh Brackett was SERIOUSLY felt in that third movie. I’ve always wished I knew what she planned for it.
I found the first one of the second batch just creepy and could never bring myself to watch the rest. Sorry, to any who really love it.
But Star Wars is one of the top ten movies of all time, IMO. It did what it set out to do brilliantly, and, like the original ST, did it on a shoestring budget…which meant no hiding behind expensive sfx.
Star Trek was okay but there was one scene that broke it for me, Maybe I’m weird and nit picky but I fell out of the movie experience with the ice planet scenes. A RED creature –predator no less, living on ICE. It was the work of the effect department no doubt and in a world with faster than light travel and teleportation maybe I shouldn’t mind but that’s the point where my brain stopped accepting.
Hi, there! Welcome! (Kneeling down)
You know, I’m ashamed to admit, I didn’t even think of that! You’re so right. and I’m usually really sensitive to stuff like that. Ah, well, I still loved it. :D
It does speak, however, to the need to be conscious of all aspects of writing and visual representation. You never know when you’re going to create the one thing that will totally blow the suspension of disbelief. It’s one of the things that makes writing so hard.
Like getting the date WWII ended off by a year! Once there’s an error like that, you’ve lost a reader/viewer.
Of course, the cool thing about ebooks is that you can go in and fix it!!!! Endlessly!!!! YAYAYAYAYAYAY
Why hello and thank you for inviting me to peek in.
The date World War II ended? It’s um… An alternate history ya and an errr… A wizard did it!
I think you’ll have fun with this crowd. Carolyn’s group over on Wave Without A Shore are even livelier.
If only this author had been that clever…and she’s made millions…sigh… Ah, well….At least they could fix it in the (many) reprints.
It’ll be hard for ST to do much about their red guy.
Maybe his prey is colorblind, coming from the ice planet, and the red is a genetically linked trait to his ability to use sonar!
That’s what we should do…look for this sort of thing and create “fixes”
