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Tag: Star Trek
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Oh yeah…reactions to those ‘Star Trek’ screenings
J.J. Abrams’ “Star Trek” is pretty low on my “to-do” list, I have to say. Ever since the CW/Young Guns approach was announced (not to mention an underlying disinterest in the material that goes back decades), it’s been a bit difficult to keep the yawns down. What can I say? I’m no Trekkie.But even I have to admit the positive notices, coming out of screenings in Austin (where Paramount has AICN in its back pocket and can offer up the goods in fanboyland) and Sydney (where the film held a world premiere at the Sydney Opera Hosue) have been getting my attention. Here are a handful of reactions…
Moises Chiullan, Hollywood Elsewhere:
…an unrelenting, slam-bang naval war movie that rarely catches its own breath. Shades of swashbucklers and submarine thrillers alike are all over the storytelling and smash-bam-kaboom stuff going on throughout. It’s packed to the gills with escapist heroism with a healthy dose of optimism. There’s plenty of room for interpretation for those who want to look for some allegory that is or isn’t intended. The key is that Abrams and his team have bottled that ’77 stuff of legend.”
Harry Knowles, Ain’t It Cool News:
There’s some powerful thoughts about the future of our people in STAR TREK. That we as a people could be those people in a hundred, two hundred, three hundred years. If we can put away childish notions of borders and differences. If we can culturally keep our differences and celebrate our commonalities. At our best, STAR TREK is our future. Not BLADE RUNNER. Not TERMINATOR. Not any other Science fiction that I’ve seen, but STAR TREK. It’s where I HOPE we’re headed.”
Neil Miller, Film School Rejects:
This is a big, fast-paced, sleek version of Star Trek that is unlike anything we’ve seen before — a new brand of space film that stretches what we thought possible in the realm of visual effects, and I don’t think that’s going to bother anyone.”
And Peter Sciretta at /Film wrangled up some early Twitterers on the Austin occasion. Dare I say it, my interest is piqued on a “Star Trek” movie.
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OFF THE CARPET: Handicapping 2009 a year in advance!?
Ahh. The dust is settling. And on the horizon, just visible through the mist and waiting to drive us all up the wall once again: the 2009 Oscar season.I’ve been writing this year-in-advance column for probably six years now, and I always look forward to gazing ahead. No one dives in so pathetically deep this far out as yours truly, but in exchange for not having a life for the past few months, I get to unload this burden the day after our annual season’s peak and forget about little gold men entirely for a few months.
It’s quite liberating.
The most interesting thing about the season to come, from my vantage point, is the lack of a dreaded “frontrunner status” for any of the contenders. Some might say Clint Eastwood’s Nelson Mandela project (which is not called “The Human Factor,” mind you — the director says the film is currently untitled and is based on John Carlin’s book “Playing the Enemy”).
Others might say Rob Marshall’s “Nine” (coming from a money-tight company hoping to avoid echoes of “Memoirs of a Geisha”). But I don’t see a “Geisha” from here, or a “Charlie Wilson’s War,” expected heavies waiting to miss the mark. The field is curiously flat, and as a result, excitingly broad.
Let’s get to it, shall we?