Underworld
We re-watched Underworld and Underworld Evolution the other day; I really do like those movies. It was quite funny in that for a few minutes there I had to make the effort to remember that we were watching this, and not Blade. Kate Beckinsdale is quite good; Scott Speedman is quite adorable. Quite adorable.
The thing that struck me this time was the atemporal and aspatial nature of the duo. Yes, there is the date at the start of Evolution, where you find out about Williams and Marcus; there is the whole, rather confused thing about how long the war has been going on, how long Selene has been a vampire, and exactly when Alexander Corvinus lived… but it doesn’t give a date for the movie, and it’s both sufficiently old-fashioned – the mansion, for example, and the very noir feel – as well as sufficiently futuristic – the clothes, guns, lights – that atemporal is the only way to describe it.
The cityscape of the first movie is unrecognisable: it could be European or American. Add in the rural landscape of the second, which is essentially mythical Transylvania (or your basic Eastern European setting), and it quite confuses the setting utterly – certainly more European than American, which is entertaining in contrast to the predominance of Yank accents. I liked this aspect; I think it worked better than trying to ground it somewhere more concretely. It sets the story loose, lets it play fast and loose with geography and makes it more dramatic.
I was also reminded of quite how attractive the movies are to watch. Lovely shadows, stark corners, gloomy backgrounds… delightful.
Rise of the Silver Surfer
… was really, really crap. I liked the premise of the Surfer himself, but they really didn’t develop that very well – and even if he’s just a herald, they could have made more of that aspect. I even quite liked the idea of exploring their tension-filled relationship with their fame, but that was done quite poorly too. And except for a few moments between Reed and what’s-her-face, Alba, and some angsty moments between the whingy Human Torch and his sister, there was pretty much no real interaction between the Fantastic Four themselves. Essentially, it was SFX driven, and the plot – not to mention the dialog – really suffered as a result.
Fun to watch though, as long as your credulity is taking a long, long holiday.
Godzilla
So yesterday was the first real day of my holidays (weekends don’t count). I thought that a perfectly lovely way of starting my hols would be getting up late (check), pulling on the dressing gown (check; because Melbourne has decided to go back to winter for whatever daft reason), and watch Godzilla… hmm. Yes.
I saw the remake when it came out, in 1998 it turns out. I remember thinking it was hilarious. I put it down on my BigPond Movies list, and thought it would be great to share it with my love. Sigh. It was not to be, sadly. Because it really wasn’t as good as I remember. In fact, it was quite average. When I realised it was 130 min worth of average-ness – at the 50 min mark – I made a considered judgment and gave up on it. I could not do it.
And so is one of illusions destroyed. Heartbreaking.
More than meets the eye
We didn’t go to see Transformers at the flicks. I really wanted to, but my love had heard varying reports. Personally, I trusted ‘s assessment, and agitated for going, but we somehow never got around to it. So we got it through BigPondMovies, and every half an hour or so he was then heard to exclaim “This is fantastic! Whoever didn’t like this had no sense of humour!” Duh. Imagine how much more awesome it would have been on the big screen! I’m sure there were aspects that I missed, due to not being an afficiando, but that’s ok – the plot didn’t rely on them, I did get the “more than meets the eye” reference, and I’m happy for uberfans to get some smug enjoyment that I missed – because I like doing it when I can, too.
Things I really liked:
The fight scenes. Woohoo!
The CGI transformations. Very nice.
The dry sense of humour.
Josh Duhamel!  =]
The incongruity of the plot. Yes, there are several bits it’s best not to think about, but when it’s done in such an entertaining way I’m generally disposed to forgiving leaps of logic. After all, we’re talking about giant alien robots…
Things I got annoyed at:
Sam, the main human; especially at the start, very painful.
The Autobots being made to seem a bit lame. Optimus Prime, in particular, sometimes came off as less than heroic.
The bits that were blatantly put in for teenage boys – like Mikaela doing the stretch to look under the hood. Pft.
For those people who thought the movie was crap: we’re talking about aliens, robot aliens, who by all accounts were the indigenous life forms on their planet. So… what is your problem with the rest of the movie?!
Oh, and for a final touch, we two really were destined to be together: turns out we both owned a toy Bumblebee as kids. How sweet!
Fly me to the moon
Space Cowboys was on last night. I love it! All four of the main actors are playing basically the characters they’ve been playing for the last 30 or 40 years, in some cases: it’s a beautiful tribute. I don’t think any of them have played astronauts before this, although I could be wrong about that, and I’ll bet they’ve all wanted to at some point, so it’s wish fulfillment on several levels.
It could easily have gone horribly wrong – turned into a pastiche that made fun of them, or turned boringly sentimental, or just seemed ridiculous. Instead, there’s a bit of sentiment – but it doesn’t get in the way of the story; they are poked fun at, which is only appropriate because they’re old codgers proposing something crazy – but they overcome it, and it’s made to seem feasible. The bits in space are hilarious: I can just imagine an exec ordering the props guys: “Buttons! and toggles! And more flashing lights, too! Doesn’t matter what they do, just add them!” I’m sure there are lots of those things on spacecraft in real life, just that I’m not convinced all of those shown in the movie correspond…
Anyway, I think the movie has the right amount of romance, understated heroism, lurking skullduggery, and funny lines to please a lot of people. I could have stood for a bit more action, but I realise that wasn’t the point of the movie. It really is very good!
Star Trek Generations
I think Picard is my favourite. He’s just more… refined. Kirk makes Jon Mclean look like a choir boy. The thing that’s particularly funny about those lists (and there were quite a few that I didn’t get) is that a number of them are the same, word for word – yet on one list it’s bad and on the other, good.
So I’ve watched Star Trek Generations tonight. I don’t think I’d seen it before – although it’s possible that I saw it at my first O’Week party, back in the day (the cinema at uni was showing movies all night; I know I saw a Star Trek at maybe 1am – with the kir part of kirmish, as I recall – but don’t remember it at all; and no I wasn’t drunk, because the Melbourne Uni security team, in their wisdom, wouldn’t accept NT proof of age – only Victorian). What can I say? The effects are definitely better. I don’t like Riker much, Troi is a pain, and while Crusher is good she ain’t no Bones. Geordie (oooh, it jut occurred to me that that’s another UK slang reference, like Scotty… yes, I’m a bit slow) is ok, but no Scotty, and Data is a lesser version of Spock without the interesting reason for being all logical and cold. I think what I’m saying is that I want Picard with the original crew; that would be my ideal Star Trek!
Soren was a worthy adversary, with a very interesting reason for being a prat. It was fun seeing Kirk and Picard together (they’re in one other together, I believe?). Overall, quite a satisfying plot, I thought.
My final question, though: why is such a nice-looking planet as Viridian 3 uninhabited??
Stargate – the movie
We watched the original Stargate movie for the first time in a long time the other night. I must admit to a little fangirl flutter of the heart when the theme music started: I had either not realised, or forgotten, that the theme music is the same in the show as it was in the movie. Not surprising, of course. It did give me the giggles to realise just how much I loved SG-1 – we finished it ages ago, and I miss having more episodes to watch. More than I miss FarScape; perhaps not quite as much as West Wing.*
A couple of things I noticed, post-viewing of SG-1:
# Michael Shanks and James Spader – very cool, very similar, at least in playing Daniel. sigh.
# Richard Dean Anderson kicks Kurt Russell as Jack. Completely.
# I had never thought about the fact that they must store sets – in the hopes of re-using them at some stage. Either that or they worked really, really hard at being true to the movie for the show, and I just doubt it.
# There was a three year gap between movie and show. Is that a long time? It seems like a long time.
# The movie was a bit… well… boring. Especially compared with the show. Am I getting old and jaded?
# I cannot wait for the SG-1 movie to be made. There’s nothing on IMdB about it, but seriously… it has to happen.
*Of which we must retrieve seasons 2 and 3 from the in-laws. I love the first season, but there’s only so many times you can watch it with only season 7 as your other option. Oh, and season 5, but that gets a bit depressing.
Movies and books
So I went to see Elizabeth: The Golden Age the other day. I loved it, and will post more about it soon. For now, this has amused me:
Do I have a book about Walter Raleigh on my shelf?
Yes
Have I read said book yet?
No
Will I now always think of him as Clive Owen?
Hell yes!
Is this a problem?
Hell no!
Tee hee. I thought it was funny. It really is a bit like seeing the movie before reading the book.* I also have a bio of Elizabeth – the Alison Weir one, I think – which my darling bought for me on a whim once and who was subsequently devastated when I informed him that I was a bit over Elizabeth, because she had been done to death. I think I am also at the point where I can read that book, too.
*Which I have only successfully done once: I saw the BBC series of Pride and Prejudice before reading it, and it made reading it much easier, for me.
Star Trek VI
So all that stuff about odds and evens of Star Trek movies is, I have decided, crap. I just watched VI (man I love BigPond Movies!), and it was great. Right from the start it was obvious that it was made much more recently than V, because the effects were infinitely better. And the plot – there was one! And it was a good one! No faffing around at the start; an unexpected double-cross (for me to be surprised by a double-cross is quite unusual); and the acting was probably a bit better than it had been previously.
Kirk got emotion and a turn-around, Spock got devious, Bones got insulted… and Sulu got his own ship.
This one I am happy to recommend to most scifi buffs.
Oh – and Klingons quoting Shakespeare – brilliant! An interesting touch to make them more civilised, which throws the whole Klingons-as-brutes questions into the air and pushes Kirk, and the audience, into questioning the relationship between ‘civilised’ and not, and indeed what ‘civilised’ means.
I liked it.
And there’s a new Star Trek coming out next year, with Karl Urban as Bones! It’s set in the space academy, as a prequel – the original gang learning how to be the insubordinate types we know and love. I’m not entirely convinced, but I’ll probably go and see it.
Star Trek V
As part of my ongoing effort to watch all of the Star Trek movies, I finally saw this one a few days ago. I think I’ve mentioned before the odds/evens thing with them, and after the craptacular nature of IV I had hopes for V, although with some trepidation. Fortunately, it was most certainly better than IV – although that wasn’t hard. What felt like about the first third was a weird, let’s-get-to-know-the-characters-outside-of-the-ship thing… maybe their audience polling said that would play well? Me, I don’t need to hear Kirk and Bones singing “Row, row, row your boat.” And am I the only one who thought the suggestion of romance between Uhura and Scotty just a bit weird??
Anyway, the storyline was bearable; I quite liked the emotion-mad Vulcan, although most of the twists were predictable. I thought he was a good character, and they used him well. I also liked the way they managed to get yet another ego-tripping maniacal Klingon in there (and all the while reading subtitles, I couldn’t help but think of those people who ‘speak’ Klingon – figuring out syntax from subtitles is hard work!!). As always, I think Bones was my favourite. His acerbic wit and delight in calling Spock out as a nutter are highly enjoyable.
Probably not one for the casual movie viewer. You have to be a bit nuts to watch it, I think.
Randomly Yours, Alex 