A droll, minor film, pleasant to watch, albeit somewhat forgettable. In mock-doc style we meet the wacky members of an Italian orchestra rehearsing in a medieval abbey, under the baton of a strict German conductor. Each section has their own philosophy (funniest: the bassoon player, questioning God why he has been condemned to express himself artistically with a ridiculous farting sound) and all are understandably Fellini-esque. The union representative is on hand and sparks fly against the stern German. Make political allegories if you must – as the last 10 minutes of this short feature explode into surrealism and the walls come tumbling down. Recommended.
1/2
I may be opening myself up to arguement, but I poo-poo this episode for a few concrete reasons. Firstly, it’s kinda the same conflict as in The Naked Time. I mean, how many times are we to be shocked to see Spock have emotions? Secondly, it is never really explained how Kirk is able to resist the drug of the spores. We are left only to cling to the idea that “Kirk has a strong will.” But a stronger will than Spock? I should think not. (If you are trying to remember if you saw this episode, it is the one where these huge flowers blast happy dust in peoples’ faces.) Finally, I disagree with this episode politically. Why shouldn’t the settlers stay on their planet, high on spores, living, laughing, loving. Kirk yells at them, You’ve had no challenges! You’ve made no progress! The exact quote: “Man stagnates if he has no ambition, no desire to be more than he is.” Well, maybe not everyone wants to explore strange new worlds and seek out new life and new civilizations?! Maybe some people are content to do a little farming, hang out by the lake, screw and listen to music. It’s funny this reactionary, anti-Epicurean, none-too-veiled attack on hippie culture episode would air just after A Taste of Armageddon and its anti-Vietnam sentiments. As the Enterprise sails off to its next adventure, Spock looks back on the planet and says that for the first time in his life, he was happy. Maybe dude should reassess his career?
Okay, folks, here it is: the first episode of Trek I ever saw. And lucky for me it was one like this, otherwise my snotty 11 year old self may have just snubbed the whole Enterprise enterprise as just some dumb action show. In “A Taste of Armageddon” we see an enlightened nation’s policy thought out to its twisted, illogical end. A 500 year old war is fought by simulators, civilian casualties report to incinerators. The people die, but the culture lives on. If you’ve ever seen knucklehead Pat Buchanan on TV screaming “When a culture dies, a country dies!!!” you’ve seen the seed of this logic. Written as a protest to the Vietnam war, this is one of Trek’s finer moments. It also has some cool action sequences, aliens in funny hats and two of Spock’s greatest lines. When trying to get someone to turn their head, he dryly remarks, “Sir, there is a multilegged creature crawling on your shoulder.” And later, when he places the sexy blonde administrator (who was en route to suicide in a disintegration booth) under the guard of the sexy Asian ensign he commands, “‘Yeoman Tamara; you will stay here and prevent this young woman from immolating herself. Knock her down and sit on her if you have to.” I had to rewind that to make sure I heard it correctly. Lastly, could some super-Trekkie write me & tell me if this episode is in direct contradiction to the Prime Directive? It kinda feels like it might be, I think Kirk steps over the line of self-defense once he blows out Eminiar’s computers and forces them to talk peace.
Why doesn’t Jordan let us in on what’s going on with Body/Antibody? That’s because by the time I get home each night after a 5+ hour edit session (coming after a full day of giving tours) it’s the last thing I want to talk about. But things are going swimmingly. We’ll have our cut by Sept 21. Because that’s when we can’t afford to pay our editor anymore. (And when he goes onto another assignment anyway.) So we’ll see where we are on Sept 21, maybe have a test screening, do a few more tweaks and then get a sound mix and hire a composer. So until then it is go to work, go to edit, come home late, try not to wake Ann up, watch an episode of Trek so I don’t completely lose my mind, then repeat.
I’ve received lots of good feedback about the Star Trek Project. I hope you quiet readers out there are having fun, too. I did, though, get some guff today from a longtime reader who is upset that I didn’t stick with the original plan of watching everything in order. And when I stopped to think about it, he’s right. So, the review I just posted (TNG’s Where No One Has Gone Before) will be the last out-of-order episode. I’m gonna head back into TOS exclusively, then the Animated Series (it should be out on DVD by then) then the films, etc. I don’t think I’ll go back and re-review the handfull of TNG episodes I’ve already reviewed. I am a little concerned, though, about what will happen when I get to the period of concurrent serieses (TNG/DS9 have some overlap and DS9/VOY has a LOT of overlap.) Let’s worry when I get there. There are resources out there that tell the exact airdates of everything, the question is just how much I want to drive myself crazy with this.
1/2
Ferengi are in the house! If the Federation has made peace with the Klingons, we need some new alien bad guys. And the Ferengi. . .aren’t it. But for a while we thought they would be. So the Ferengi aren’t the pesky pains in the asses they will be later, they’re actually evil. I watched this episode for the first time a few nights ago and now I can barely remember it. So it must not have been so terrific.
Sure, it’s terrible. But tell me your first reaction wasn’t a shrug when you first heard.
Here’s all I wrote when I watched this three years ago: High Modernism in movie form. Like a trip to the Whitney Museum. I’m still digesting this, it is troubling, but I enjoyed it enough that I plan to watch it again with the commentary track. Well, I did listen to the commentary track and, as so often happens when the track is of a British film scholar, I am now convinced this is one of the greatest works of art of all time. That will fade; however, it is still a great film. A masterpiece of restraint — images and information are doled out just a morsel at a time. The music, performances, photography — a crystalline time capsule of a glorious moment in high art. The staircases! The hotel lobby! The nightclub with the high glass ceiling! The opening credit font! Jesus Lord, I LOVE that fucking font! It’s funny, because I could engage the film the way, I’m sure, Resnais and Marguerite Duras wished it; to talk about memory and regret and longing and specious time and Henri Bergson and pacifism and nationalism and blunt sex and pride and a lack of communication in postwar Europe. And yeah, it’s all in there. But this movie will always be about that font. If Dave Brubeck were a font, if Franz Kline were a font. . .if the second floor of the Noguchi Museum were a font. . .if Alain Resnais were a font. . .he’d be the font at the head of this, his greatest movie. . .and perhaps the greatest movie representing whatever it is that that font somehow represents to me. (The film has been quoted all over the place, whether you realize it or not. The best, of course, is here part of this.
No one will ever really know what the author’s intent was here. ‘Cause if it was just to make pornography, then he failed. And if it was to create a visceral communion of desire, ecstasy and need. . .well, he also failed. But he came close on the second one. There are some really mesmerizing sequences that hold you in a daze of mood. Then there’s some nonsense stuff in there. I hate to say it, but a lot of the raw, unsimulated sex just kinda shocks you into distance. If a haze of passionate delirium is the goal, there are more effective means to do it. Not a total piece of crap (some of the ceremonial stuff, if accurate, is wild) but not worth your time, either. For banned European art/porn films, stick with I Am Curious (Yellow) or Last Tango In Paris.
One could, if one wanted to, read this whole film as a reactionary parable to the free love of the 1960s. But I would never do that. In fact, the best thing to do is not think about this movie too much as you watch it — the turnabouts in this film are waaaay too predictable. Still, fun. Best aspects are Jessica Walter who, the shreiking nutjob, who you really want to bang on the head with a hammer. Terrific, absurd performance. Also, Clint’s house. It was on a rock over the ocean (you could hear the waves), yet it was also in the woods. And it was all made of glass and open. Ann & I couldn’t quite figure it out, but we were both kinda jealous. How does an overnight dj afford such a place?
I know the French love Samuel Fuller, but just because they’re right about Jerry Lewis doesn’t mean they are always right. Which also doesn’t mean that I don’t like Samuel Fuller — I just don’t like this movie. I don’t hate it either. I love the coy way the oldest profession is alluded to at the beginning, with the near Wilder/Diamond-style dialogue. This is tossed by midpoint, though, as all subtlety seems to be replaced, philosophically, with frankness. “When I first came to town, I was a prositute!” “Take this money, but no abortion!” “He was molesting that young child!” There are some fun campy moments (shoving money in the madam’s mouth) but also some terrible scenes (anything with the old seamstress is impossible to watch without groaning.) In all, I feel like the movie either could have been good (it isn’t) or it could have been ridiculous and over-the-top in a “Bad Seed” kinda way (it is at times, but not nearly enough.) Though the musical number, parapelegic children singing in a dirge-like fashion, is truly one of the strangest set-pieces I’ve seen.
1/2
I suppose the biggest complaint I have of this episode story-wise is that it tries to do too much. Is it about a planet ruled by telepathic zombies or a benevolent religion gone haywire? Is Landru so evil it must be destroyed or could it just have been altered? And why no follow-up to the storyline of the missing ship, the Archon? Or, for that matter, the interstellar rumspringer that is freaky to watch (”Festival! Festival!”) but really isn’t relevant to the plot? In the end, Kirk destroys a supercomputer with logic. Won’t be the last time that happens. Design-wise, this is truly a marvelous exercise in laziness, as the production was obviously shooting on whatever sets were laying around. The planet looks like turn-of-the-Century California, until you see the prison, which is a medieval dungeon. But the rooms leading off from this have that vague, angular, “space look.” And then there’s the shot of the away team running from mayhem: a hurled rock clearly bouncing (!) off a Redshirt’s head. Spock does wear a cool black robe, though.
While there are some bright spots here (some of the first TNG disucssions of the Prime Directive and its paradoxes) I can’t say I really recommend this episode. Lt. Yar is abducted by a planet of evil black men who all took acting classes from the guy who used to do 7-Up Ads. There is an Amok Time-esque challenge, a reversal and then everyone goes home. Hopefully it all happens quickly enough that you don’t notice the myriad of plot errors. I mean, if some quick library research from Data & Troi can then explain away all of the planet’s kooky customs, don’t you think they would have looked into this and, I dunno, had some expectations before going there to sign this important treaty? Sigh. I can’t wait for Lt. Yar to die, for Riker to grow a beard and for TNG to stop sucking.
1/2
This marks the first time here at the Star Trek Project where I am seeing something for the first time. Yes, somehow I never saw this, the second aired TNG episode, and one of the more famous. (For those scratching their heads, it is when Lt. Yar and Data do it.) It is also a sequel, of sorts, to The Naked Time — you know, the one where Sulu gets greased down and runs around with a sword. Again, the crew of the Enterprise picks up the space-drunk disease. Some manage to keep their shit together (Riker) others go from exposure to complete bufoon in 10 seconds (Picard). My favorite part is the obese Hawaiian actor playing Jenga with (vital engineering) computer chips. Entertaining, despite gaping plot hole (Dr. Crusher can’t come up with a vaccine. . .until she magically can. Huh?)
