Boldly going where plenty have gone before.

I sat down this afternoon to re-watch the 2009 Star Trek reboot, I consider myself a Trek fan but honestly in the cold light of day now that the fan boy anticipation of new Star Trek has died down this movie is a bit of a mess.

Firstly while as a fan of Star Trek it was nice seeing Leonard Nimoy playing Spock for ( probably ) the last time it's the Spock prime scenes that pretty much kill any momentum the story had, rather than trying to appease the legions of Trekkies with all the time travel alternate reality nonsense I think the franchise would be better served clean reboot and not worry about trying to tie things to the past.

Secondly Simon Pegg as Scotty, I'm sorry but he was just horrible and I'm a bit of a Simon Pegg fan, this was the worst bit of recasting done for the movie, they deleted the Klingon sequences but kept Scotty getting sucked up a cooling pipe - WHY?!!

Now the actual story was decent although it needed a few more rewrites in my opinion, Kirk taking command of the Enterprise the way he did was just nonsense and Spock stranding Kirk on an alien planet rather than putting him in the brig was pretty silly as well, the destruction of Vulcan was interesting since it clearly signals this isn't the Star Trek of old which I think is a good thing.

It's not like the movie is a total train wreck but honestly this should have been better than it was, hopefully they do a bit better with the sequel.

Some Australian Movies

I've watched a few Australian movies over the last couple of days.


Chopper
I'd never seen it before, before he got into movies Eric Bana was a second rate comedian on Australian TV and despite all the accolades I just couldn't imagine he'd be a halfway decent dramatic actor - turns out I might have been wrong.

The big disappointment of this movie is that it was obviously a small part of a larger story and just when it was getting interesting the movie ended.

Useless piece of trivia: my wife used to be a community nurse and for a while many years ago and Mark Read's father was one of her patients / clients.


A Man's Gotta Do

The story of a fisherman and part time gang enforcer who struggles to understand and relate to his wife and daughter, I liked the idea behind this movie more than the actual movie.


The Adventures of Barry McKenzie
I have to say up front that I don't like either Barry Crocker or Barry Humphries so a movie starring both of them and co-written by Barry Humphries had zero appeal to me however the clips used in the documentary Not Quite Hollywood looked mildly amusing and that's what it was, very mildly amusing.

Stephen Chow

Stephen Chow's movies have been a bit of a mixed bag for me, there have been a few that I've really enjoyed but there have been a lot of his movies that I just haven't enjoyed at all, as it's turned out I 've watched a few of his movies over the last few days.



The Tricky Master

I would've liked this movie more if they concentrated on telling the story in a comedic way rather than wasting nearly the first half of the movie with oddball comedy that mostly had nothing to do with the plot - the shoe licking was kind of gross.


Fight Back to School

I couldn't really get into this movie ( doesn't bode well for parts 2 and 3 which I also have on DVD ), I watched My Boss My Hero a while back and I liked that movie and I guess I was hoping for something similar to that in terms of tone and story but it wasn't to be and that's a shame since the story of a cop going undercover at a school to revolver a stolen police chief's pistol had potential.

Maybe the sequels will be better.


The Magnificent Scoundrels

Stephen Chow's comedy is pretty hit and miss for me and if I was honest it's been more misses than hits but this was a like able romp that was more situational comedy than the screwball nonsense that seems to take place in a lot of his movies, this was decent if nothing special and I did actually laugh a few times.

Once they got on with it the various characters and the different blackmail schemes they were trying to run were kind of fun

Dark Water ( US remake )

I just finished watching the US remake of Dark Water, I'm not sure how or why but it all went horribly wrong, the movie had a fantastic cast and it seemed to be technically well made and the story was simple enough that I would've thought that it would be pretty hard to screw it up but I was bored by this movie, really really bored.

It's the end of the world as we know it ( and I feel fine).

I finally finished series three of the original version of Survivors today, overall I'd have to say I enjoyed the show, the third series wasn't as good as the first two but it's still worth watching, the third series feels like it needed a couple more episodes to properly wrap up the story properly but I didn't find it as disappointing as the finales of some recent series.

In comparison to the recent remake of Survivors I'd have to say this was the better version of the two, I enjoyed them both but the original series had a more credible interpretation of the aftermath ( in my opinion ) of the plague.

A show well worth watching if you ever get the chance.

Masters of Horror Season 2

It's only taken me a couple of years but I've finally started watching the second season of Masters of Horror on DVD, I really enjoyed the majority of the first season but somehow I just never got around to the second and final season.

I started with the season 2 episode Pro-Life directed by John Carpenter, I'd heard a lot of bad things about this episode but I thought it was OK, certainly not as bad as I'd heard but if this was one of the worst episodes in the season hopefully the remaining episodes will be a lot of fun.

The Sum of all Fears

A decent film that was let down by casting Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan as Affleck is no Harrison Ford or Alec Baldwin for that matter and he just didn't make a convincing here in this movie.

I thought it was an interesting idea to relaunch the movie series and start with a much younger Jack Ryan who could then play the part for several movies if [b]The Sum of all Fears [/b]had been successful which given the lack of sequels I guess it wasn't.

The supporting cast were all great but poor Ben Affleck just seemed out of his depth at the time, it would be interesting to see what he could do with the role now.

The movie is worth a look but probably not worth spending money on.

The Invisibles part 1

I started watching the UK TV series The Invisibles a while back, it wasn't groundbreaking but I liked it, anyway I got to the second DVD only to discover that the disc was faulty - it was obviously a manufacturing problem and a replacement was sent, I sat down today to discover that the replacement set has a faulty second disc, I may have to resort to buying the incredibly over priced Australian region 4 version just so I can see the last three episodes of the series.

In case anyone was wondering The Invisibles is about a group of Burglars who conducted a series of robberies during the 1980's and retired to Spain, now years later homesick they return to England but are trying to keep a low profile since they are still wanted by the police, now with the help of the son of a former associate they have to commit a job for various reasons each episode and stay ahead of the law when all they want to do is retire in peace.

Superman / Batman: Public Enemies

This was a fun little romp, I think they were trying to emulate Ed McGuinness art style since he drew the comics but I don't like his art so a lot of the character designs ( especially Superman ) were ugly as far as I was concerned.

Like I said a fun little story with lots of super powered fights that was let down by some of the visuals.

It was nice to hear some of the older DC Animated series voice actors reprising their roles for this production.

Over the last 4-5 days I've only watched  animated TV shows and movies based on DC comics characters or documentaries about them and their creators and it's been fun but I'm looking forward to watching something featuring real live actors again.

Wonder Woman

I've never been a huge fan of the Wonder Woman character, considering her origin story I felt the character had potential but that was often buried in a feminist agenda that got in the way of the storytelling.

I've enjoyed most of the DC comics produced animated movies but I just wasn't really looking forward to Wonder Woman since it featured a character that I'd previously felt drawn to, that was a mistake.

The Wonder Woman animated movie was great, it had a good story with strong female characters without hammering the equality message to death, I also thought the animation looked pretty damn good as well, this is one of the first animated films where I thought being on Blu-ray actually made much of a difference to the quality of the viewing experience.

At one point I believe there were plans for a sequel to this movie but they have been scrapped due to lower than expected sales - what a shame.

Laptop Blues

As part of Caitlin's upcoming birthday present we decided to buy Caitlin a new laptop which was fine and seems like quite a decent little machine - now.

Maybe it's unreasonable of me but I think it would be nice to just get it out of the box, turn it on and expect to be able to use it, not turn it on and have to wait for nearly two and a half hours while it sets itself up, then of course there's the various updates, removing the crappy trial versions of software that no-one in their right mind would want anyway and finally setting up the wireless Internet access.

When Caitlin gets it she'll be able to turn it on and use it right away and now that it's all set up properly it seems like it'll be a pretty decent laptop but for the price we paid it would've been nice if everything was set up and ready to go.

Shopping

I like comics, I like them a lot, no longer having a local comic store is a pain in the ass, I still pick up odds and ends but I haven't had a regular comic order in years.

Since I'm still interested in various comic characters I try and make a point of buying the various comic related movies and TV shows that come out although I've gotten a bit behind lately.

Today I picked up a huge pile of DVDs and Blu-ray discs based on various DC comic characters.

On Blu-ray:

Green Lantern: First Flight
Wonder Woman
Justice League: New Frontier
Batman: Gotham Knight
Superman / Batman: Public Enemies

I already had a couple of them on DVD but they were extremely cheap

On DVD:

The Batman / Superman movie
Batman: The Animated Series season 1
Batman: The Brave and the Bold volume 1
Teen Titans season 1 volume 1
Teen Titans season 1 volume 2
Teen Titans season 2 volume 1
Superman: A Little Piece of Home
Superman: Last Son of Krypton
Justice League: Starcrossed The Movie
Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman
The Batman volume 2
Batman vs Dracula

That should keep me busy for a little while, I'm really looking forward to seeing some of this stuff.

King Kong (1976)

Last night I watched the 1976 version of King Kong, a movie I haven't seen since the late 70s / early 80s and a movie I remember liking as a kid, in fact I seem to recall it being a pretty big event when it was on TV and it was split over two nights and pumped full of advertising.

This version of King Kong has a bad and I think somewhat undeserved reputation, it's not great by any means but given the time it was made I think they did a decent job of bringing Kong to life even if it was just a man in a suit most of the time, the final confrontation with Kong and the military on top of the world trade centre was nearly ruined by some terrible rear projection work but it wasn't as bad as Charles Grodin and Jessica Lange's performances in the movie.

Instead of making it a period film the producers chose to set the movie in the 70's, the same period the movie was made in and I liked most of the story changes that were made to update the film.

Not a classic film but I think a worthy attempt at re-telling the King Kong story.

The Dungeon Masters

This documentary follows the lives of three fairly hard core Dungeons and Dragons players, at first I thought this was going to be a laugh at the freaks type documentary like Trekkies and it's sequel.

The three main subjects of the film are all damaged individuals whose lives hadn't turned out the way they hoped and they were honest about that, Dungeons and Dragons may have been what they had in common as people but the film really wasn't about the game.

While I don't relate to the people in terms of personal experience I was occasionally reminded of people I know and some of their experiences.

I don't know if I recommend The Dungeon Masters, I enjoyed it but the subjects of the film might not be a group that people can easily relate to.

All the Boys Love Many Lane ( except me )

I remember seeing a trailer for this movie a while back and thinking it looked decent even though it was a teen horror and I think it started out well but it was trying to be clever and intorduce a plot twist towards the end that just didn't work, combine that with the fact that soon after the killing started I found myself getting bored wasn't a good sign.

Overall the movie was predictable and kind of dull but as teen horror movies go I've seen a lot worse, the guy who made the trailer should get an award for his work.

Their Name was Bond, James Bond

I watched the 1954 and 1967 versions of Casino Royale last night, neither of those movies are part of the official James Bond Film Franchise.

The 1954 version was a black and white made for TV production that featured an American Jimmy Bond, other than the fact it takes place in a casino this version doesn't have much in common with the book, the actor Barry Nelson who played the part of Bond wasn't very good but I imagine this was a rushed production and despite it's flaws the 1954 version does have a few nice moments.

The 1967 version of Casino Royale is a mess but it's a watchable mess and it features more James Bonds than you could want in one movie including David Niven, Peter Sellers and Woody Allen.

One thing the film does have is an outstanding soundtrack written by Burt Bacharach.

Neither of these movies resemble the official Bond franchise bit I think they are interesting in their own right.

Noooooooooooooooo !

I've been watching The Invisibles, a fun little show about some retired criminals who are trying to keep a low profile but who have to keep committing various heists each week for various reasons.

Yesterday I attempted to watch the second disc only to discover that it's faulty so while I'm waiting for the replacement to arrive I've been watching Hu$tle, another fun show but it's just not the same.