Recent viewings: Up!, Star Trek, etc.

[Andrew]

Today is a day of liberty for me.  Been catching up on things around the house, including running a stray cat off with my paintball gun (honestly, stray cats are a menace and impossible to catch).  It also gave me a chance to watch my DVD of "Up!"

I think that this is just about as close to fetish porn as you can get, without it actually being porn.  The beginning sequence with gay, masochistic, submissive Hitler was disturbing.  Seeing him being anal raped was pretty traumatic, especially since he liked it.  After that the movie turns into a soap opera - but with fetish quasi-porn.   Throughout the film our female narrator (Kitten, unless I am going blind) jumps in to interject poetic nonsense.  She is also buck naked and usually jiggling to a fro.  I was waiting for the big lumberjack to say, "Pretty girl..."

Last night Katie and I watched "Star Trek: The Motion(less) Picture."  Maybe that is an incorrect statement.  I watched the movie while Katie promptly fell asleep.  For the life of me I cannot wonder why.  I mean, the opening scene is exactly three minutes of watching a Windows screensaver.

Lesson Learned:  Advanced machine civilizations have never developed metal polish.

"One Million AC/DC" was a painful exercise in watching carnal antics.  My only rescue was the absurd dinosaur, which I think is the same one as from "The Mighty Gorga."  Other than that, why did people go out of the cave and how did the dinosaur eat them from 300 meters away?

"Marihuana" is an old B&W about the evils of the drug.  The best part is the corrupt main actress overdosing on heroin (I think it was supposed to be heroin) by drinking it.  She then staggers into the police trap.  A detective holds the door open so that the dying woman's daughter can watcher her death, then slowly closes the door.  Thanks mister, that is sure to help the child's development.

Time to answer some email.

[Fearless Freep]

Last night Katie and I watched "Star Trek: The Motion(less) Picture."

The Klingon theme music when they attack V'Ger is the *only* good thing in that whole movie

[AndyC]

I wouldn't say it's the only good thing. I always thought Persis Khambatta was pretty hot, bald head notwithstanding.

Actually, I'd like to see a review of ST:TMP on this site. Could be funny to see it reviewed in Andrew's style.

Love the metal polish remark. I always thought it was funny that the machines would decipher Voyager's programming, build a huge, powerful machine around it, but not bother to clean it up. That and the fact that not only did they not realize that part of the name was covered in crap, but they knew how to mispronounce it.

[Flangepart]

just Flitz metal polish and some elbow grease, and your superior machine God Being will feel like new! Other then the Klingons ...don't get me started on the new head ridges.....and their music, the only life was in Bone's entrance.
....Nice Music, good redesign of the big E, not much else.

[AndyC]

Flangepart wrote:
>
> ....Nice Music, good redesign of the big E,

Agreed. I love the new theme they introduced, and the first movie Enterprise is still my favourite, although I'm not sure I liked the interiors as much in TMP. I think the interior design improved in later movies.

The Motion Picture would have been much better if there hadn't been so many hopes hung on it. The success of Star Wars, and the cult status of Star Trek had dollar signs dancing in a lot of people's heads. I think the idea of this being an important movie complicated the process of making it.

The other problem was Roddenberry himself, who was trying to be an artiste. Rather than tell a good Star Trek story, he was remaking 2001. I mean, how much time to we have to spend watching shots of special effects intercut with the awestruck faces of people pretending to look at special effects?

I think Gene R. got way too much credit for the original series in the first place. I mean, he created Star Trek (ripping off Forbidden Planet), but I'd have to argue that Gene Coon contributed a lot to making the show entertaining. It could also be argued that the studio execs Gene was fighting all the way probably deserve some credit for keeping him in line. He had good ideas, but when he had too much control, things began to suck. Moderation was a good thing, and obviously lacking in ST:TMP.

[Andrew]

Don't forget the fact that the machine civilization gave all this to a mental child.  It is like handing the keys to a suburban to an eight year-old.  Sure, now the brat can go to the Dairy Queen for his own waffle cone, but how much damage is this going to cause to the neighborhood.

Katie fell asleep during the "people staring in awe" part (which is the first forty minutes or so).  I was kept amused by the random falling spacewalker.  Almost every scene outside of the Enterprise has a person in a spacesuit, often seeming to be out of control.  I started saying, "Ahhhhhh!" every time I saw one, as if they were falling.

[Fearless Freep]

I always thought Persis Khambatta was pretty hot, bald head notwithstanding.

She's pretty attractive in her own right, but being bald and totally emotionally  flat, she was about as interesting as a store mannequin.  Don't get me wrong, as an actress she did well with the role, but 'hot' would not be an adjective I'd use.

Don't forget the fact that the machine civilization gave all this to a mental child. It is like handing the keys to a suburban to an eight year-old.

Someone else's child who happened to wander into your yard.  You hand them the keys to the Jag so the can find their way home.

The more I think about it, the more intersteller whale communication actually makes a lot of sense by comparison.


It's one thing to *want* to be profound, like Arthur C Clarke with 2001, but the reason such thougths are considered profound is that they're not all the easy to come up with.  You can't just think "I'm going to make a profound movie..about something or other"  You have to have profound ideas to start with, and then build a movie or story from that

[AndyC]

Fearless Freep wrote:
> Don't get me wrong, as an actress she did
> well with the role,

Yes, Persis did a great job of playing a mechanical probe, but I don't think there was much acting involved. I mean, she comes across as pretty mechanical in any other role I've seen her in, even when she's trying to emote. The only exception to this is when she does the "big sad eyes" thing as Ilia.

Still, very easy on the eyes.

[Fearless Freep]

I mean, she comes across as pretty mechanical in any other role I've seen her in, even when she's trying to emote

What!?!?! What about the passionate romance she showed in "Megaforce", or the shear menace and presence as the evil enforcer  in "Pheonix The Warrior"?

Still, very easy on the eyes.

I was pretty young when I first saw it, I thought she was creepy

[AndyC]

Fearless Freep wrote:
>
> I was pretty young when I first saw it, I thought she was
> creepy

As I recall, I thought prety much the same thing. I suppose bald women, like Hawaiian pizza, are an acquired taste :)

Seriously though, I'm thinking I wouldn't mind writing a review of this movie, with Andrew's permission of course.

[Fearless Freep]

Seriously though, I'm thinking I wouldn't mind writing a review of this movie, with Andrew's permission of course.

Well, I don't think you need Andrew's permission to write a review.

Whether he or anyone else publishes it is a different matter :)

[AndyC]

Fearless Freep wrote:
>
> Well, I don't think you need Andrew's permission to write a
> review.
>
> Whether he or anyone else publishes it is a different matter :)
>

I already have a monthly b-movie newspaper column. Doesn't quite make up for covering all the boring township council meetings, but it's a perk.

Still, I'd like to try my hand at a review for this site, and ST:TMP seems like a good place to start.

I should probably at least get Andrew's permission to include the jokes about the metal polish and the suburban. They're too good to leave out.

[John]

Part of what bugs me about this movie is how disorganized everything was. Spock isn't around for the first half, McCoy doesn't want to be there, the engines don't work right  etc. Is this Star Trek or Star Wreck? Not to mention those horrible grey uniforms. Why did the two crew members die in the transporter? It only takes a transporter on one end to beam someone onto a ship. The ones on the station worked, so there's no reason to even use the ones on the Enterprise.

 Small piece of trivia; It really wasn't made all that clear in the movie, but Ilia was supposed to be completely irresistible to men. It wasn't her look, but the pheromones of her race. The movie made it look like every guy had the hots for a bald woman.

[Andrew]

"Still, I'd like to try my hand at a review for this site, and ST:TMP seems like a good place to start."  AND "I should probably at least get Andrew's permission to include the jokes about the metal polish and the suburban. They're too good to leave out."

Feel free to do so.  The only warning is that I am currently receiving about 10 reader reviews per week.  Now, many of them are a little on the "enthused, but hard to understand" side.  All I ask is for a set of quotes on the metal polish joke - I have been making that one for years and years.

On the good side - we watched "The Wrath of Khan" tonight and that is probably my favorite "Star Trek" film.  Set it, with only the TV series as background and no following films, and it is actually quite good.  Almost everyone puts in a decent performance, including Shatner.

[AndyC]

Yeah, that was made clear in the novel, and in magazine articles and such, but the whole pheromone thing was never explained in the movie. The best they do is make some obscure remarks about oaths of celibacy, sexually immature species and so forth, and have the guys all acting like awkward, horny teenagers around her. I suppose you could infer that her race at least has some kind of reputation, if not some physical or mental attributes that make them highly attractive, even to the point where regulations are necessary. Still, it doesn't quite convey the whole idea of a chemical attraction making her completely irresistable, and there is no mention of the psychological danger to human men if they have sex with her. This would have added depth to Decker's whole predicament - he's in love with her, but at the same time afraid of her. In the movie, he's just some sailor who shipped out and left her behind.