Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Three lists follow, all yoinked from Slashfilm: first and second, the best-reviewed movies of the decade (10 from Metacritic and 20 from Rotten Tomatoes), third, the IMDb top 25 movies of the decade. For each list, I’ve italicized the films I’ve seen, and bold italicized the films we have in our movie collection at home (in other words, both seen and enjoyed enough to keep). I’ve also tossed in links to searches on my blog to mentions or reviews of the films I’ve seen, when possible.

Metacritic’s Top 10 Best-Reviewed Movies of the Decade

1. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
2. Ratatouille (2007) (Cute, but has the usual Pixar problem.)
3. Spirited Away (2002)
4. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) (As with the entire LotR series, TRotK gets quite a few mentions.)
5. Sideways (2004)
6. WALL-E (2008) (Once again, the Pixar problem.)
7. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
8. There Will Be Blood (2007)
9. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) (Many mentions of TFotR have appeared over the years.)
10. The Queen (2006)

Rotten Tomatoes: Top 20 Best Reviewed Films of the Decade (minimum 100 reviews)

1. Man On Wire
2. Up (Cute at times, but on the whole, we didn’t like it.)
3. The Wrestler
4. Finding Nemo (My original review stands, but…well, by now, you know what the “but” is.)
5. The Hurt Locker
6. Let the Right One In
7. Spellbound
8. Chicken Run
9. Murderball
10. The Fog of War
11. Anvil! The Story of Anvil
12. The Band’s Visit
13. The Incredibles (I love the film, but…am I beating a dead horse yet?)
14. Sideways
15. The Queen
16. Spirited Away
17. Once
18. Capturing the Friedmans
19. Maria Full of Grace
20. Winged Migration

IMDb’s Top 25 Movies of the Decade

1. The Dark Knight (2008)
2. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
3. City of God (2002)
4. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
5. Avatar (2009)
6. Memento (2000) (One brief, rambling review from when I fist saw it. Used to own this one, would like to again.)
7. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) (Once again, many mentions.)
8. WALL·E (2008)
9. Amélie (2001)
10. The Departed (2006)
11. The Pianist (2002)
12. Spirited Away (2001)
13. The Lives of Others (2006)
14. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) (One very brief blurb.)
15. Requiem for a Dream (2000) (A brief mention from when I bought the DVD. Don’t have the DVD anymore, but this is another I’d like to have in my collection again.)
16. Inglourious Basterds (2009)
17. Up (2009)
18. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
19. The Prestige (2006)
20. Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
21. Downfall (2004)
22. Gran Torino (2008)
23. Sin City (2005)
24. District 9 (2009)
25. Batman Begins (2005)

I haven’t been keeping up with my movie watching, have I?

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

So the Star Trek universe is now in an alternative timeline. Everything that we ‘know’ of Trek’s future history (save, of all things, the Enterprise series) has been wiped out, and our beloved crew (and all the writers tasked with coming up with new and interesting things to do) has a blank slate to work with. However, it’s still a pretty big universe, and there’s a lot of stuff out there that won’t have been affected by the timeline split. While I’d rather see new adventures from here on out, if writers ever need some inspiration, there’s a fair amount of stuff that we already know is going to be a problem down the line.

So, with a little digging around on Memory Alpha, I present a (very incomplete) list of things that Spock Prime could warn the Federation about, as they should still exist to pose future threats to the Federation. Obviously, one could just list every bad guy and alien encounter seen in all the series and films, but I just wanted to grab a few of the ‘biggies’ (that is, major potential death toll events) that came to mind.

Feel free to toss out more that might be interesting, this is just a few minutes of pondering.

• 2267: Discovery of the S.S. Botany Bay, carrying Khan and his crew of supermen. Probably best to either just torpedo the ship, or aim it at a planet not likely to explode and dump Khan and crew off there as if they’d arrived normally.
• 2267: The planet killer starts gobbling up Federation worlds.
• 2268: Yonada is on a collision course with Daran V. Perhaps not a threat to the entire Federation, but the Yonadans have the cure for the disease xenopolycythemia which will kill McCoy in 2269 if not treated.
• 2268: A giant toxic space amoeba which could multiply and ‘infect’ the galaxy appears.
• 2273: V’ger returns in search of its creator.
• 2365: First contact with the Borg. However, as this contact is instigated by Q, there’s no way to positively determine an exact date when the alternative universe Borg will discover the Federation.
• 2387: A super-supernova destroys Romulus (remember, that was only stopped in the Prime timeline, not the new timeline).

Update: Pop Culture Zoo has taken a much more in-depth look at the ramifications of the new timeline that’s well worth reading. Touches on some of the things I mentioned in the list above, and brings up a few others.

Now that we know how the new Star Trek film handles the continuity issues, what exactly does it all mean and what are the greater implications to not just the original series, but the greater Trek mythos as a whole? I freely admit I may be the only one who really cares, but the more I started thinking about what this new timeline meant, the more it spiralled out of control. So, I decided to take a stroll through established Star Trek history and was surprised at all the events, large and small, that are affected as a result of two actions on Nero’s part. It all starts in the time of Mark Twain.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

As briefly mentioned earlier, Prairie and I went out to see Star Trek on Friday evening, and, long story short: given the unenviable and potentially disastrous goal of reinvigorating a much-beloved but floundering and stagnant franchise that most people had written off as long past its prime, J.J. Abrams and company managed to beat the odds and pull it off with style. In the many long months leading up to the release of the film, I’d wanted it to be good, I’d hoped it would be good, and as we got closer, the many outstanding reviews gave me hope — and for once, I wasn’t let down.

Non-spoilery Rambling

The biggest question, of course — beyond even the redesign of the Enterprise and her big nacelles, or how well the story would mesh with established canon — was whether recasting characters that we’ve known for so many decades would even work. Could they manage to be the characters without either slavishly aping the original actors, or fall into parody? Would Kirk be Kirk without Shatner’s (not quite) inimitable delivery?

Thankfully, the answer is yes. As I’ve been thinking back over the film over the past couple days, the biggest thing that stands out to me is just how incredibly well the cast did at inhabiting the essence of the characters and their personalities without falling into the trap of mimicking the original actors. Pine, Quinto and Urban as the “holy trinity” of Kirk, Spock and McCoy likely had the toughest jobs in making us believe in them as the characters, but all three of them (along with the rest of the primary cast) managed to make me a believer.

Given that much of what was done in this film was necessary to ‘reset’ the franchise so that they could move forward from here without being trapped by canon — really, I don’t quite understand how people can be upset about the device used to reset things, as without that, we’d know the future of the characters and there wouldn’t be much long-term suspense or real sense of danger — I am really looking forward to seeing where we go from here on out.

I want to see this movie in the theater again, I want to have it at home to watch again, and I already can’t wait to see what this team can do with the sequel, when they’re free to move forward.

More thoughts under the cut, as they’re going to be more than a little spoileriffic…

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Long-time readers will recognize this particular soapbox, but it’s good to know I’m not the only one standing on it: Pixar’s Gender Problem:

Whenever a new Pixar movie comes out, I wrestle with the same frustration: Pixar’s gender problem. While Disney’s long history of antipathy toward mothers and the problematic popularity of the Disney Princess line are well-traveled territory for feminist critiques, Pixar’s gender problem often slips under the radar.

The Pixar M.O. is (somewhat) subtler than the old your-stepmom-is-a-witch tropes of Disney past. Instead, Pixar’s continued failure to posit female characters as the central protagonists in their stories contributes to the idea that male is neutral and female is particular. This is not to say that Pixar does not write female characters. What I am taking issue with is the ad-nauseam repetition of female characters as helpers, love interests, and moral compasses to the male characters whose problems, feelings, and desires drive the narratives.

Much of the post covers much the same ground that I have in the past (first asking if Pixar is a ‘boys only’ club, then investigating Wall•E’s Misogyn•E, and then in response to an interviewer’s question). There is some word of an upcoming film that I hadn’t heard about yet that does appear to have a female lead. All may not be rosy just yet, though…

The Bear and the Bow: OOOOOH! Somebody told Pixar that they needed to make a movie with a girl as the main character! So, duh, it’s going to be “Pixar’s first fairy tale”!!! The main character will be, get this, a PRINCESS! But, since the Pixar people are probably good Bay Area liberals, I’m sure the princess will want to defy her parents’/society’s expectations. Where have we seen that before, I wonder? No cookies for rehashing the same old shit. If we’re super lucky, she won’t marry the prince, which will allow us to cover the same ground that Robert Munsch and Free to Be You and Me covered in the goddamn ’70s. Maybe it will be good, but no matter how good it is, it still PISSES ME OFF that girls get to be main characters only when they are princess (or marrying up the social ladder a la Belle and Mulan) in fairy tale worlds. Boys can be main characters anywhere, but if a girl is the main character, you can bet your ass it’s a fantasy world.

So it may be a step forward. If we’re lucky, it’ll be a big step forward, and it may even be enough to get Prairie and I back in the theater for a Pixar film. Noone can really argue that Pixar is bad at storytelling (well, aside from Cars, that is), but in the end…

…It’s not just the stories they choose to tell, it’s how they choose to tell them: in a way that always relegates female characters to the periphery, where they can serve and encourage male characters, but are never, ever important enough to carry a whole movie on their own shoulders. Unless they’re, you know, princesses.

(via Kottke)

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

This has been everywhere across the ‘net for the past day, so you’ve probably seen it…however, if you haven’t, now’s your chance.

The Star Wars trilogy, as told by someone who hasn’t actually seen the movies.

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn’t seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

For no particular reason that I can come up with, I was thinking over how I rate movies, and attempting to quantify the basic reasoning for each star of a five-star rating system. I think I’ve pretty much nailed it down.

* (one star): Two hours of my life that I won’t get back.
* * (two stars): Not a total waste of time, if the viewing cost is low enough (free coupon, someone else is renting it and I happen to be around to see it, a good Netflix plan with relatively high turnover).
* * * (three stars): Worth a rent.
* * * * (four stars): Worth seeing in the theater (at a matinee, or at an evening show if I’m either excited enough by the particular movie or feeling rich enough to afford it), possibly worth purchasing (preferably secondhand or after a while so the price has dropped, but perhaps at full price if I think it’s on the high side of four stars).
* * * * * (five stars): A keeper. Worth seeing in the theater if possible, worth owning at whatever price I think is reasonable.

Of course, as with any rating system, there’s some amount of variability, and my movie collection certainly isn’t entirely comprised of 4- and 5-star movies (Star Trek V? Honestly, it’s about a 2-star movie. But it’s Star Trek, and I’m a nerd and a completist). But on the whole, I think that’s a pretty good overview of my thought process.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

For Christmas this year, Prairie and I have decided to treat ourselves and upgrade our TV set from the one I bought when I moved to Seattle seven and a half years ago (!!!!!). It’s a nice enough TV (a Sony Wega 27”), but it’s huge, heavy, and while still in good shape, it’s old tech. The original plan was to wait until it died, but between Sony’s generally good longevity (my parents had a little Sony 13” TV that went for almost thirty years) and my geeky techno-lust, Prairie surprised me by suggesting that we go ahead and upgrade to the new hotness.

So, the hunt is in progress. At this point, I’m pretty much decided on a 32” Samsung, most likely either the LN32A550 or the LN32A650, depending on where prices land in the weeks between Black Friday and Christmas.

Of course, with the jump to an HDTV comes the jump to HD programming. Day-to-day entertainment will come courtesy of Comcast — we’re already getting our cable through them, so we’ll just upgrade that to the minimum possible digital/HD package. For movies, though, we’re doing a bit of back-and-forth (though, to be honest, Prairie’s on the “back” — that is, staying with what we have — while I’m on the “forth” side of the discussion).

My movie-loving, technology-geeking little heart tends to go all a-pitter-pat at upgrading to Blu-Ray. I jumped onto the DVD bandwagon as soon as it dropped into the realm of affordability, loved the jump in video and audio quality from my old VHS tapes, and have been looking forward to the next step forward.

Prairie, however, doesn’t really see what all the fuss is about, and her approach is one that I’m having an amusingly tough time arguing against: if we can see the show and enjoy the story, than what’s the big deal? She never saw a big difference between VHS and DVD, doesn’t really care about surround sound (a moot point at the moment, as living in an apartment building means that standard stereo at reasonable levels is far more realistic than full surround and gut-thumping subwoofers — something we really wish our neighbors would realize…), and just doesn’t see the point in adding another piece of electronics and another remote to the stack we have to keep track of already.

I’ve gotta admit, it’s hard to really say, “But…it’s better!” without realizing just how foolish that sounds.

Not that I don’t try. I’d have my geek card revoked if I didn’t at least try.

(And on a not-unrelated-at-all side note, I think it works wonderfully that our respective geek levels generally balance out into reasonable end results. I don’t know how couples made of dual übergeeks can manage!)

In any case, I think part of the conversation is simply the fact that we don’t really know how much of a change we’re going to see when we upgrade. Sure, I’ve looked at all the numbers and can see the mathmatical difference between SD 640x480 and FullHD 1920x1080, I’ve done simple little experiments looking at resolution increases, and I’ve been working with digital photography long enough that I can get a feel for the difference betweeen a .3 megapixel image and a 2 megapixel image (the approximate difference between SD and FullHD). But running numbers and reading webpages is no substitute for actually seeing what happens when we plug it all together.

So I tried a little experiment today, and tossed out two questions on Twitter…

You who’ve moved from “old school” TV to a new HDTV (pref. w/some form of HD feed): is it really that big of a difference? Turned up to 11?

Same question, part 2: Along the same lines, how about the DVD to Blu-Ray transition? Again, is it that much visibly better?

…and got the following responses:

• axsdeny: DVD to Blu-Ray: yes. If you have even a 720p TV you can tell the difference. It’s beautiful.
• lyracole: i don’t notice the difference between my standard and hd, but sir does. also, fuck blu-ray.
• stoppableforce: w/r/t the difference between SDTV and HDTV: YES. YES. DEAR GOD YES. The difference in clarity is A-FUCKIN’-MAZING.
• stoppableforce: w/r/t the DVD-to-Blu-Ray thing: Not so much. We’ve got both, Blu-Ray looks slightly better, not enough to make me buy a PS3 yet.
• mellzah: I hate to admit it, but blu-ray looks great. DVDs don’t look sharp on my TV— non-HD projection 50ish inch—but Blu-Ray movies do!
• skyler: Huge difference. I attribute most of it to HDMI, actually. Clearer interference free signal. Xbox 360 + 1080p is great w/DVDs.
• antifuse: short answer? Yes. Longer answer? Depends what you watch. Plain DVDs upscaled by Blu ray look fab, and many shows look great too.
• wnalyd: Finally answering your HDTV question: Heck yeah there’s a difference bwtn HD + SD. Turned up to 17. Wouldn’t go back.

So the final consensus (admittedly, since I used Twitter, drawing from a very weighted sample of at least somewhat geeky-type people), while not clear-cut across the board, seems to be that yes, there is a difference, ranging from “better” to “A-FUCKIN’-MAZING”. We’ll just have to wait and see where we fall along that spectrum with the equipment we have (we’ll have the HDTV and HD cable from Comcast for the pretty pretty pixels, and a non-upconverting DVD/VHS combo deck for movies), and maybe see if I can find anyone with a Blu-Ray player for us to borrow for a night to help us decide if we want to add that piece, too (of course, if the Blu-Ray players don’t drop into affordability, that’ll make the whole point moot as well).

Did I miss anything?

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Potentially interesting additions to people I’m following on Twitter:

• The Joker
• Harvey Dent
• Rachel Dawes
• Commissioner Gordon
• Lucius Fox
• Bruce Wayne
• Harley Quinn
• Edward Nygma
• Dr. Jonathan Crane
• Two Face
• Gotham Cable News
• Gotham Police Department

I found the Joker through a Wired article yesterday (I think). Today Rachel started following me, and I found most of the rest directly and indirectly through her, except for Edward, who added me while I was exploring.

I’m not sure exactly what’s going on here, but it’s intriguing so far. While it could be a tie-in to the current movie, it’s obviously working at least somewhat on its own chronology, as (slight spoilers here) a couple of those people are no more as of the end of the movie. At the same time, a couple more of those characters haven’t popped up in the current movie timeline, so perhaps there’s some long-term advance campaign for the next movie, whenever it comes along?

In any case, they’re actually savvy enough to have some sort of actual people behind the personas; there’s been some interaction with other Twitterers that they’re not solely advertising ‘bots. They may not stay on my Twitter list long-term, but for the moment, they’ve peaked my curiosity enough to keep an eye on them.

Possibly related accounts that just appeared on Twitter in the last few days:

• Kendra Luehr appears to be a prolific fan, but she’s had a lot of back-and-forth with many of the personas.
• Miranda Dent seems to be a fanfic character, possibly one of Kendra’s?
• Nada Shatila doesn’t have much of a web footprint, but is also chattering with the people listed above.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Really. Thanks to TrekMovie.com for posting this excerpt from a radio interview with Kevin…

Host: So thumbs up on The Watchmen, what else you got?

Smith: I saw a movie last night that I cannot talk about.

Host: Was it good?

Smith: It was phenomenal.

Host: Any stars, any break out stars, and do they trek?

Smith: The stars absolutely trek in this film. It is fantastic. Anybody who was worried doesn’t need to be worried–about this film I cannot talk about…It was in very capable hands. The director did a phenomenal job–the director and his crew. Top notch cast and the guy that plays the lead is an instant star. That dude is going to be so famous. He is so wonderful. He picked up a role that I would say is pretty challenging for someone to step into the shoes of, because it is a role that has been played before many times by the same guy.

Host: How do you out Shatner, Shatner?

Smith: I don’t know what you are talking about.

Host: I was just saying that as an expression.

Smith: Yes, absolutely, in a world of expressions, I would agree with that…I am so not good with this game, you are going to bury me man.

Host: We had you on before The Dark Knight and I remember asking you if you could direct a movie like Dark Knight and you said ‘hell no’ it was so far out of your sphere…but I bring that up to preface this. Let’s say a franchise like Star Trek, not that you have seen the movie or we are talking about the movie, but we are talking about it for example. That is something that is so dangerous to attempt. Is that the kind of project you would like to do? Would you like to be the guy who gets to do a movie like that?

Smith: I would not like to be the guy. In the case of something like Star Trek, it would take a really insanely talented filmmaker–storyteller. Like in the case of Star Trek, JJ Abrams. So leave it to the people who are best equipped for it. I am just the guy who should be watching those movies.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

A couple weeks ago, I got an e-mail from Jaime Weinman, who writes for Macleans (in her words, “sort of Canada’s TIME and NEWSWEEK”), asking for a quote for an article she was working on about Pixar’s future. I agreed, and in my usual style, sent her a small book. The final article was published late in June, and — proving yet again that I just cannot write for soundbites — my quote was boiled down to one simple line:

[Non-Pixar animated films] follow the Pixar example in some respects; they’ve especially learned from the fact that Pixar’s movies all focus on male characters and appeal the most to boys. (Michael Hanscom, a computer analyst who blogs at michaelhanscom.com, dubbed WALL-E “MISOGYN-E” and says that while he likes Pixar, he’s not going to see their movies in theatres “until we see some evidence that they’ve let a girl into the clubhouse to play.”) But for the most part, these movies are far away from Pixar’s artist-oriented approach.

Heh. Not at all inaccurate (except, perhaps, for titling me a ‘computer analyst,’ as flattering as that is) — and believe me, this is not a complaint, I don’t envy Jaime or her editors the task of boiling my response down to something that would fit within the scope of the article — but for the sake of completion, under the jump is my full response to her question. If you’ve read my earlier posts on this matter, there are no big surprises awaiting.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Last night, Prairie and I watched The Mist, the recent adaptation of an old Stephen King short story.

Short review: for the first 120 minutes or so, while we had some quibbles with the decisions made, it’s a remarkably faithful adaptation of the original story, and we were really enjoying it. Unfortunately, the last five minutes of the film completely ruined it for us.

If you rent it, I strongly recommend stopping it about five minutes before the end, right about the 1:20 mark. That would be a worthwhile ending, and one that’s more or less true to the original story.

Spoilers after the jump…

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

A bit of pseudo-Shakespearean silliness, originally by ceruleanst:

ACT I SCENE 2. A road, morning. Enter a carriage, with JULES and VINCENT, murderers.

J: And know’st thou what the French name cottage pie?
V: Say they not cottage pie, in their own tongue?
J: But nay, their tongues, for speech and taste alike
   Are strange to ours, with their own history:
   Gaul knoweth not a cottage from a house.
V: What say they then, pray?
J: Hachis Parmentier.
V: Hachis Parmentier! What name they cream?
J: Cream is but cream, only they say le crème.
V: What do they name black pudding?
J: I know not;
   I visited no inn it could be bought.

J: My pardon; did I break thy concentration?
   Continue! Ah, but now thy tongue is still.
   Allow me then to offer a response.
   Describe Marsellus Wallace to me, pray.
B: What?
J: What country dost thou hail from?
B: What?
J: How passing strange, for I have traveled far,
   And never have I heard tell of this What.
   What language speak they in the land of What?
B: What?
J: The Queen’s own English, base knave, dost thou speak it?
B: Aye!
J: Then hearken to my words and answer them!
   Describe to me Marsellus Wallace!
B: What?
JULES presses his knife to BRETT’s throat
J: Speak ‘What’ again! Thou cur, cry ‘What’ again!
   I dare thee utter ‘What’ again but once!
   I dare thee twice and spit upon thy name!
   Now, paint for me a portraiture in words,
   If thou hast any in thy head but ‘What’,
   Of Marsellus Wallace!
B: He is dark.
J: Aye, and what more?
B: His head is shaven bald.
J: Has he the semblance of a harlot?
B: What?
JULES strikes and BRETT cries out
J: Has he the semblance of a harlot?
B: Nay!
J: Then why didst thou attempt to bed him thus?
B: I did not!
J: Aye, thou didst! O, aye, thou didst!
   Thou hoped to rape him like a chattel whore,
   And sooth, Lord Wallace is displeased to bed
   With anyone but she to whom he wed.

(via Boing Boing)

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Last weekend, Prairie and I went out to see I Am Legend at the local second-run theater, and we both came out with the same opinion — not a bad flick, until the end. For some reason, the last ten minutes or so of the film completely diverge from everything that had been set up until that point, taking what had been an interesting apocalyptic zombie film and ruining it for us with an ending that didn’t make any sense.

When we got home, I did a little poking around, and read on the film’s Wikipedia entry that the theatrical ending was actually (and unsurprisingly) a studio-mandated reshoot, and differed drastically from the ending as originally shot. Prairie and I were planning on renting the DVD release to see the original ending, but now, it’s been leaked to the web…and it is so, so much better than the crap that was released to the theaters. Obviously, you shouldn’t watch this if you haven’t seen the film and/or are worried about spoilers, but if you weren’t happy with the film as released, you really should check this out.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Now here’s a presidential candidate I can get behind.

McClane was fighting the war on terror before it even had a name — and he’s proven he can win it.

John McClane believes in strong health care — he just doesn’t have time to get to a doctor when he’s being shot at.

McClane gets that technology creates as many problems as it solves. Relying on a gadget is no replacement for doing it yourself.

McClane knows that patriotism isn’t about waving a flag while you sit on the couch watching ‘American Idol’. It’s about getting off your butt and fighting for what’s right.

McClane is the American cowboy for our times. He gets how important action-packed portrayals of true heroism are.

Since he hasn’t announced a running mate yet, given that I’m not in entire agreement with his stance on technology, may I suggest Angus MacGyver? Equally as able to get out and get things done, but his willingness to use and adapt available technology would be a nice balance to McClane’s ‘hands-on’ approach.

(via nyquil.org)

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

When I first heard that work was beginning on a new Star Trek film, I suppose you could have described my first response as ‘cautiously optimistic’ — however, that reaction would have swayed far more towards the caution side of things than the optimism side.

However, as more and more (non-spoilery) details appear, I’m moving more and more towards the ‘optimism’ side. While there are still a few little details that raise warning flags (for instance, that the script was written by the guys who wrote Transformers), overall, things are looking good.

Recently, director J.J. Abrams, writer and producer Roberto Orci and a fair chunk of the cast and crew spent a little time between shots doing a couple of Q-and-A sessions on the Trek Movie fan weblog. Full transcripts are posted here and here, but they’ve thoughtfully provided an ‘executive summary’ list. All in all, I think there’s a lot of promise here.

• First full trailer currently in the works, targeting early- to mid-summer release
• Principal photography is scheduled to wrap at the beginning of April [about 1-2 weeks more than originally planned]
• Documentaries on the film’s pre-production and production process can be expected on DVD release; Making of… book also discussed
• [J.J. Abrams friend and frequent collaborator] Greg Grunberg will not appear in Star Trek due to his commitment to another film
• About 1,000 effects shots are expected to be used in the film (more than any previous Trek film)
• Target MPAA rating: PG-13
• The two biggest challenges for Abrams were getting a handle on the vision of the future and casting the film
• Humor is a very important aspect in the film (“humor and humanity go hand-in-hand”)
• Abrams’ goal is to make Trek ‘real’ and is thus utilizing sets and location shooting rather than green- or blue-screens wherever he can
• The Enterprise “will be a combo of the physical and the virtual”
• An image of the Enterprise is “coming soon”
• The doors on the Enterprise will go “SWOOSH!” when they open.
• The set of the Enterprise bridge will be stored for future use;
• the movie’s script is about 128 pages long (indicating a roughly 2 hour movie)
• the script took about four months to write
• [Orci] and co-writer Alex Kurtzman will not be making cameos in the film
• James T. Kirk and the film’s villain (Nero) were the most difficult characters to write;
• the TOS episode “Balance of Terror” and the second, third, fourth and sixth films helped shape the writers’ takes on the characters, as did novels by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens.
• Script shoots for many memorable moments akin to the “Never forget the name of the ship…Enterprise” moment in TNG “Yesterday’s Enterprise”
• Film makers have kept with Trek tradition and brought in academic and scientific consultants (more info on this promised)

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

This was an entertaining little quiz — identifying classic sci-fi from short sound clips.

	I received 86 credits on The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz How much of a Sci-Fi geek are you?
Take the Sci-Fi Movie Quiz

Most were pretty obvious to me, but not all of ‘em.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Vanity Fair has a huge article looking at the new Indiana Jones movie, and midway through, there are some quotes from Spielberg that sent two thoughts running through my brain. The first was that what he was saying was making me more excited about this latest sequel than I already was. The second was how desperately I wished more directors would think like Spielberg does here (don’t worry, there aren’t any movie spoilers):

Rather than update the franchise to match current styles, Lucas and Spielberg decided to stay true to the prior films’ look, tone, and pace. During pre-production, Spielberg watched the first three Indiana Jones movies at an Amblin screening room with Janusz Kaminski, who has shot the director’s last 10 films. He replaces Douglas Slocombe, who shot the first three Indy movies (and is now retired at age 94), as the man mainly responsible for the film’s look. “I needed to show them to Janusz,” Spielberg says, “because I didn’t want Janusz to modernize and bring us into the 21st century. I still wanted the film to have a lighting style not dissimilar to the work Doug Slocombe had achieved, which meant that both Janusz and I had to swallow our pride. Janusz had to approximate another cinematographer’s look, and I had to approximate this younger director’s look that I thought I had moved away from after almost two decades.”

That much already had me nodding and thinking good things, and then he went on….

Spielberg promises no tricky editing for the new one, saying, “I go for geography. I want the audience to know not only which side the good guy’s on and the bad guy’s on, but which side of the screen they’re in, and I want the audience to be able to edit as quickly as they want in a shot that I am loath to cut away from. And that’s been my style with all four of these Indiana Jones pictures. Quick-cutting is very effective in some movies, like the Bourne pictures, but you sacrifice geography when you go for quick-cutting. Which is fine, because audiences get a huge adrenaline rush from a cut every second and a half on The Bourne Ultimatum, and there’s just enough geography for the audience never to be lost, especially in the last Bourne film, which I thought was the best of the three. But, by the same token, Indy is a little more old-fashioned than the modern-day action adventure.”

The script, Spielberg says, can provide the blockbuster pace. “Part of the speed is the story,” he says. “If you build a fast engine, you don’t need fast cutting, because the story’s being told fluidly, and the pages are just turning very quickly. You first of all need a script that’s written in the express lane, and if it’s not, there’s nothing you can do in the editing room to make it move faster. You need room for character, you need room for relationships, for personal conflict, you need room for comedy, but that all has to happen on a moving sidewalk.”

Not just yes, but hell yes.

I was skeptical when I first started hearing about Indy 4, but the more little bits leak out (though I am endeavoring to stay spoiler free), the more I’m looking forward to seeing this one.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Given that I don’t have enough of a regular readership to really make this a game, and that I don’t want to have to constrain myself to any sort of real schedule, I’m going to change the way I’m doing this ratings game thing. Seeing as how the point is really just about the silliness of the MPAA’s ratings rationales, I’ll just toss one up whenever I feel like it. I won’t immediately give away which movie the rating comes from, but you can click through the rating to figure it out. It’s all just for fun, after all!

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Some time within the past couple years, it seems to have become standard (whether voluntarily or by decree, I don’t know) for all new DVDs to flash the MPAA rating on screen for a few moments just before the movie begins. Additionally, for the past few years the MPAA has been including a brief description underneath the rating of why the movie in question has received its particular rating.

I’m constantly amused by these little blurbs and their attempt to rationalize, in fifteen words or less, what prompted the MPAA to assign the rating it did to each movie. So, I thought we could try a little game: every so often (whenever I get around to it, hopefully no less than once a week), I’ll post the MPAA rating and rationalization. Your goal is to try to guess the film, based solely on the MPAA’s rating and their description of its faults. I’ll post the answer either after someone guesses it correctly, or later on if it has remained a mystery.

Number one, then…any guesses?

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

1. 1957: Cosmic View: The Universe in 40 Jumps, by Kees Boeke.

2. 1968: Cosmic Zoom, a Canadian animated short film inspired by Boeke’s book.

3. 1977: Powers of Ten, a short film by Charles and Ray Eames, inspired by the prior two pieces. This is the most commonly known version of this presentation.

4. 2004: The Simpsons parody version (10.3 Mb .mov file), as the couch gag for The Ziff Who Came to Dinner

All links via Kottke.