[Movie] Star Trek (2009)

As someone who isn't a Trekkie at all, I got some enjoyment from the trailer. It looks like it will be a fairly fun time, with some good-looking action and some beautiful-looking scenery. I don't know why Abrams insisted on a prequel of all things, but whatever. Abrams hasn't let me down yet so I'm expecting some good things here, but for the most part I don't care too much about the film.

However, I *have* always wanted to get into the Trek series of films and TV. Where would be a good place to start with doing that?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Denicalis

Tarantino, Ghost Rider, Die Hard, now THIS?

Are you trying to give LeHah a concrete example of why Dope doesn't actually have the -worst- taste on the boards?

Please. There are actually people on this board who genuinely like Michael Bay, M Night, Steven Sommers, and the rest of those untalented lackeys, and you're trying to lump me in with those tasteless fucks by naming one director I enjoy, two out of my only three guilty pleasures, and a man who's impressed me as a producer only? Christ dude, you're reaching.

In terms of Abrams, the only things he's been a part of that I've seen are Cloverfield, Mission Impossible 3, and Lost. Cloverfield was excellent, both in terms of its marketing and it's actual execution, MI:3 was just a fun but unmemorable action flick (wasn't offensively bad like, say, Quantum of Solace), and Lost has always been a fun show to watch, discuss, and theorize with friends. Despite the third season being flat-out awful, it's a sharply-written show, and even though sometimes it pisses me off with the blue balls it leaves me, it's air-tight.

In regards to Star Trek, I don't care enough about it to rush out and see it on opening day (far less interested now that I read that he's going to have both a Lost AND Cloverfield reference shoved in there), and based on the 2 minutes of footage that the trailer showed us, it looks like a fairly fun sci-fi film that I will give a chance some day.

How ya doing, buddy?

HD trailer now available to those who require hi-res footage to make up their mind about something 6 months before they actually see it.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

What I don't get is why you people even SEE the movie if you think it's going to be that bad. Seriously, nobody is forcing you to go. Just stay home and save yourself the money.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by LeHah

Because, unlike you apparently, I have to see a movie in order to form an insightful opinion on it.

There's a joke about you thinking your opinion is important somewhere in here but I just can't find the right words for it.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by LeHah

So you can't bother seeing something to pass judgement on it... and you can't bother finding a joke when its right in front of you? Your back must hurt from carrying around that much stupid.

I actually saw the movie yesterday morning and thought it was an absolute blast from start to finish, with very few glaring flaws to be found. With the exception of a few baffling things (the Beastie Boys song and Nokia product placement), I think Abrams knocked it out of the park.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by LeHah

You could date sprout with that level of "head in the sand" mentality!

I can't seem to recall an example of my "head in the sand mentality" considering I saw Star Trek, but something is coming back to me now... Something from late February...

Originally Posted by LeHah's Journal

Loathesome In Its Own Deliciousness: Why I Refuse To See Watchmen

Watchmen is coming out in a week and I am standing firm on refusing to see it. The reasons are many but the chief one is - unsurprisingly - Alan Moore is against it. His reasons for being cynical are many and are for good reason. Moore is, above all else, a bearded, scary looking man and an intelligent writer.

The first problem right out of the gate is that everything he's written and seen adapted to film has been complete and utter shit. League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which started off as a literary device using classic science fiction characters like Captain Nemo, Allan Quatermain and Doctor Kemp in a Justice League team-up, was boiled down to a bad mish-mash Die Hard wanna-be that is best remembered for Sean Connery punching director Stephen Norrington while making the movie. I have no doubt that many, many people wanted to follow Connery's act, after seeing the film.

From Hell, Moore's heavily researched (if historically imperfect) drama about the murders of Jack The Ripper, was given a serious go-around in Hollywood. The result was a movie that had almost nothing to do with the story; while the movie its self isn't the exceeding awfulness that details League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, it also could've been a Jack The Ripper movie separate from the original source material if they were going to deviate that far from Moore's story. The only things that remained were some character names, and the title. Why? Who the hell knows.

I refuse to even discuss the levels of awful that V For Vendetta was butchered and boxed into. There is not a fire in Hell hot enough to burn that movie away and if someone reading this actually enjoys or agrees with that film, I'm never going to talk well of you ever again.

And now here we are with Watchmen. Long considered the best material the entire history of comics has ever come up with, Alan Moore has expressed great regret in the aftermath of its release. "Why can't comics be fun again?" he lamented in an interview. And he's right - between Watchmen and Frank Miller's own epic The Dark Knight Returns, the 1980s were suddenly inundated with darker, more realistic story lines across the industry. We're still reaping the supposed benefits to this day - but for every Spider-Man: Kraven's Last Hunt we end up with a Spawn, a Dark Knight Strikes Back and a WildC.A.T.S..

First of all - the concept of making the film is faulty on that singular idea alone. Four hundred and sixteen pages of very detailed comics does not translate into a one hundred and sixty-three minute film - especially so if the film is using the comic to storyboard the visuals. The idea that one can remove large chunks of material (particularly the ending, in this case) from a story and still be considered valid is idiotic alone. Terry Gilliam attempted to make the comic into a miniseries twice - and both times failed, though the second time seems to have been more of a budgetary and effects reason than expressed interest. Robin Williams was even approached to play Rorschach, which if you think on it a bit and consider the man's reigned-in roles with Good Will Hunting and What Dreams May Come would probably have been a good choice.

Instead, we're given the director (Zach Snyder) who made 300, another woefully overrated schlock not-so-epic based after a Frank Miller comic of the same name. I will not attempt to compare Miller and Moore in terms of writing style, but Miller is a repeat Hollywood veteran: he wrote (and then had butchered by the industry) both Robocop sequels and wrote-directed The Spirit last summer which was universally panned by every person who say it. Considering I've not actually talked to anyone who saw it, we must live in a huge universe or the all of the showings were very, very empty.

But Miller wants to be part of that world. Moore does not. Moore *hates* Hollywood and everything it stands for; he's gone so far as to have his name removed from all the films his material has been adapted into. Can anyone blame him - everything he does is taken out of context and reshaped into something that sells instead of speaks.

Moore calls Watchmen "inherently unfilmable", which is not too far from the truth in some aspects. At the risk of sounding glib, the comic is drawn in a way to mimic movement, depth and scale in the way a film camera does. However, translating that to an actual camera and actual live-action characters ruins the depth, scale and intent that Moore and artist Dave Gibbons created. Its not suppose to be a movie-on-page nor is it suppose to be made literal with live actors (or any actors, arguably), its suppose to be an experience-made-larger. This is a very subtle but important part of why the movie is a failure from the beginning - the intent of the film is inherently not the intent of the story at all.

It could be said that the movie comes at the best possible time - while we're still in the fallout of The Dark Knight. I won't go into why I think that movie was the biggest pile of shit-shoveled, self-aware, pseudo-intellectual garbage any human or group of humans has ever defecated into existence - even my original journal entry on the film pales to the wanton vitriol of hate I feel toward it - but the fact is that the two films deserve each other. The Dark Knight with its smarmy exposition rants and college freshmen discussion on chaos with Snyder's misconception of the political agenda behind Watchmen's statement of "If there's a God, he must be American" goes together in a bad "smart for stupids" intellectual misunderstanding.

The end of it is this: If the author of your favorite novel said that the movie adaptation was against his wishes, that it was wrong to exist at all, that it had nothing to do with him or her and that they wish it never existed - who would you side with? The writer? Or the studio system and its hack director?

I guess it's easier to talk out of your ass when your mouth is filled with so much SAND.



FELIPE NO