[Closed] Recent Viewing Part III

Isn't MOON fantastic?

Then I can assure you´ll love it. If "Moon" has somethong that would be atmosphere. Oh, and Mansell´s score does nothing but helping creating the right mood for every single scene.

Eh?

Aside from a talking computer in a one-to-one setting (well. Sorta. ), I really don't see that.
(If only because I found Moon incredibly clever, down to earth, interesting and indeed quite moving... all the things I thought 2001 are not)

Well, good, then.
Don't let it happen again.

Little mistake there. Thought I'd correct it. No biggie.

Indeed it is! You didn't even mention how well Alex North's score works in the film.

Sorry to hear about this, James. Surely you have a CD there that may cheer you up? I'm listening to Johnny Mandel's score tracks to Caddyshack at the moment. They are bringing a smile to my face!

The Long Riders (1980)

A colorful account of the waning days of the James-Younger gang directed by Walter Hill .
The art direction is excellent and Ric Waite's camera work is often spectacular .
The editing of the Northfield robbery is superb and remains one of my favourite action scenes in a movie ever .
The slow motion together with the slow sound makes for something cool and special .
Ry Cooder did the soundtrack and is in fine form here .

I'd love to see this film again, great GREAT film IMO.

I just watched Intolerable Cruelty

It certainly was!

It's interesting to see how much was changed since the original pilot, and indeed how much was RE-incorporated into The Next Generation (most notably "Number One").

I have to say that while I like The Cage as the first pilot, I thought its inclusion later on in the season into the two-parter The Menagerie was way better overall.



Mmmm...There's a lot of very good material still -the Guardian Of Tomorrow, The Menagerie, The Doomsday Machine-, and a lot of very cheesy stuff -Arena (that fight with the Gorn has me looking away in embarassment); Spock's Brain-.

It's always been a mixed bag, but I have always liked the interaction between the three leads above all else.

So, I finally got 'round to seeing Avatar.

The good: I have never, ever seen CGI as well-incorporated as in this film yet. For the very first time, I felt I was looking at alien live footage, rather than at carefully crafted computer games. Finally the technology comes into its own in such a way that we should be able to have flawless integration of live action and computer graphics...or indeed fully CGI'd films without anyone actually being aware the whole time they were watching animation.
Excellent. Just excellent.

And indeed all the designs, the whole production was flawless. Everything looked good: the alien world design was incredibly clever and creative, and esthetically pleasing. Even the concepts (being able to literally "plug into" your surroundings I thought was quite a clever touch).

The 3D design was also well done: not intrusive, not a fairground attraction, but enhancing the visuals and supporting them, rather than "in your face" (to the great disappointment of a couple of very young boys sitting behind me, who sadly remarked that "nothing came flying right at them".)

Oh yeah. And Michelle Rodriguez -in a rather thankless role- in 3D.

The bad: The story.
I'm not saing anything new here.
I don't mind clichés. In fact, I generally enjoy them when they're employed in an archetypical fashion (think Star Wars). But there was nothing archetypical about this simplistic storyline, that left holes big enough to grow a Hometree through (just one of the things I was wondering was why it was such a big deal that parts of the planet were utterly destroyed? If the whole planet was a neural network, as was suggested, the contained information (the ancestors (?) ) could be rerouted elsewhere without even blinking an eye).

And I think about 30 minutes could have been shaved off without noticeable impact.

The ugly:
What really, really impacted my enjoyment of the film, was its unrelenting cynicism.
I haven't seen such "(Civilized) Man = bad, savage =noble" sentiments combined with "look what they're doing to our poor green Earth" simplification since 1972! I'm sure Billy Jack and Marlon Brando would have been positively orgasming with delight, but I rather thought and hoped we had moved on from these converse stereotypes (a clear and understandable reaction to fifties and sixties standard stereotyping) into a more realistic, complex look at life, our actions and our surroundings.

I would have loved to see just a spark of moral ambiguity in the military and the corporates.
After all: it's supposed to be 200 years in the future, not 50 years in the past.
We have simply learned to much, done too much and seen too much to get into such incredibly simplistic reactions as portrayed in the film without a LOT of people throughout all ranks and files asking a LOT of very hard questions.

The cynicism I refer to is in this that Avatar does paint man as inherently bad.
That depresses me, and it annoys me. Man -while -obviously- capable of incredible horrors, is ALSO a force of good, wonder and power. The idea that 200 years into the future, if we'd find a peaceful race living on a beautiful world, man would just pull another "South America" (kill the indigenous, and rip it apart for profit) is beyond stupid and simplistic. Of course I do not mind man's duality being clearly picked at, but this unbridled cynicism that reduces a story to an "bad us versus good them" cartoon is not doing justice to the viewers' intelligence. Life is NOT that simple.

To my mind, it's something that should have been addressed in a more balanced, more intelligent and less overtly cynical way, which would have brought so much more depth to the film.
I'm actually surprised that no one seems to have picked up on this particular point.

All in all, a very mixed bag.
Film: 3.5 out of 5

Music: Horner's score was quite functional, echoing many indigenous styles from Earth. But overall it really didn't do that much for me. 3.5 out of 5

The episode is actually called The City on the Edge of Forever, but the gateway to other times is watched over by The Guardian Of Tomorrow (a brilliant name , and a great concept. I wished Roddenberry and the Star Trek production team would have used that again some time).

EDIT: Oops, the watcher is actually called the Guardian Of Forever!
Where did I get "tomorrow" from?

That was the second pilot after "The Cage", and the introduction of captain Kirk (rather than Jeffrey Hunter's -very good, in my opinion!- captain Pike). It was called "Where No Man Has Gone Before". A great episode!



Yes, although I gather the original versions are still available as well.
I haven't seen any of the touched-up episodes, but the photos look rather good.
But James seems to dislike them... I guess it's a matter of taste?
(As a comparison, I have watched a number of old Doctor Who episodes with "enhanced" special effects, and I thought those were really well and tastefully done! I gather they have done Trek much the same, with enhancements only affecting space ship shots, phaser beams, planets etc.. Just making them look a little better and less "clunky")

Less clunky, yes, but as far as I can gather ALL exterior spaceship shots have been replaced with CGI and it was that which didn't quite work for me in The Cage (it just looked so cheap). Now, what I can't really remember is what the old model effects looked like - they may have looked even worse, I guess? But even if so, that's part of the charm.

I gather they also re-recorded the theme music and filled some of the empty corridors of the Enterprise with new shots of extras wandering around in the background.

Back in my youth I actually maintained a database of my rankings for all the Star Trek episodes! The early Romulan one ("Balance of Terror"?) was my favourite, I think.