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I like this episode because it answers a lot of lingering questions. One that always bugged me: what would happen if Data malfuctioned? Much of Data’s schtick is that they don’t know how Dr. Soong created him . . .who is to say he won’t one day go all funny? (Third in command? A smart idea?) Anyway, the opening of this episode, with Data acting all HAL-9000 kicks a whole lot of arse. Then we discover it is only a one-time homing signal. . .but Uh-Oh! Flexo . . .I mean, Lore got the signal, too. You know what that means? A whole lot of hammy acting from Brent Spiner. Fun all around.

Everyone licks their wounds after the shenanigans in Best of Both Worlds. Picard argues with his luddite brother and Worf whines to his Russian-Jewish parents. A “real world” episode that is surprisingly fascinating. It ends with Worf’s mother making him the Klingon version of matzoh ball soup. Such a boy!

1/2

Okay, we’ve built everything up to an absolute fever pitch . . .can we maintain it? Well, almost, but not 100%. No matter, after a summer of “what’s gonna’ happen next!” we have resolution for Picard and the gang. There is bloodshed, though, so we know the Borg (and the writers) mean business. Season 4 has begun!

For those who think the new Battlestar Galactica was the first sci-fi show to elevate your blood pressure with anxiety, I recommend these two episodes.

This is where the people behind The Next Generation kinda flipped the bird to The Original Series. They had to a little. They’d survived the third season, when the orignal got canned, and kept going with full force. In fact, they ended with a two-parter that ranked in awesomeness with anything you’ll find in the annals of Kirk and Spock. Arguement is irrelevant. TNG rules!

Transfigurations is an okay episode marred by some of the worst costuming choices in the history of American television. I know there is a plot I am supposed to be following about a mysterious healing, a wanted criminal and a species-wide evolution . . .but all I can look at is the guest star’s enormous sack!!! Dr. Crusher kinda has a crush on her unnamed new patient, so she dresses him in the tightest, whitest, flesh-gripping jumpsuit in all of the galaxy. Every scene stars this guy’s floppy dong and bulging ‘nads, unless he should turn around and let his supple ass-cheeks and crack take the stage! The actor’s name is Mark La Mura and were I he I would be sueing Paramount over this costume.

Ahoy!

I have returned from Alamance County, North Carolina. During my stay I ate a fried pork chop sandwich and drank Cheerwine. I watched tomatoes grow and fed ducks (whilst bottle rockets flew at troublesome geese.) I watched a 4th-tier minor league baseball game (go Royals!) and took advantage of the $1 beers sold at such an event. I saw Cheng and Eng’s grave and James Ruchala’s new home. I met a lot of nice people I’d met before and had to ask Ann “how they fit in to the family, again?” I ate thin ginger cookies in “Old Salem” and fried chicken off the interstate. I saw an antiques mall larger than the largest Pathmark and sifted through all of their Spock-related material. I bought a kitchy beer glass and a kitchier coffee mug. I shopped at Wal-Mart with no regrets and reveled in the enormous savings ($41 for TWO giant bags of awesome stuff!) I shopped in other stores I never heard of and couldn’t believe how easy it was to find clothing in, um, a “larger men’s size” and how inexpensive these items were. I won’t have to buy underwear for years. I went to the top of Pilot Mountain. I did the tiniest fraction of driving, but almost all of the twelve hours there and back were tackled by Ann. I fed the CD machine, though, and we sang along to Meat Loaf, Neil Diamond, The Stones, The Marshall Tucker Band, Fountains of Wayne, Elvis, Queen, NPR, the Jayhawks, “Cowbells Greatest Hits,” the soundtrack to “Until The End of the World” and a tiny bit of the Mars Volta. I watched no feature films but did get some good reading and Trek-watching in.

I also took many photos (as did Ann) so you can watch this space as they will be uploaded in a handful of days or so.

Perhaps I am just in a giving mood, but I kinda liked this dopey episode.  It is nice to just the see the gang on the Enterprise engaged in an adventure that they know is going to work out just fine.  (My main complaint, actually, is that for a minute the stakes DO get raised — seems out of tone with the rest.)  Lwaxanna Troi is a fiesty Space Golden Girl and I do not actively dislike her as most do.  So there.

Check out Hoberman’s review of Manhattan on its 9 millionth 1-week revival.

I am away.  Precious little blogging from the road, methinks.  But you never know.

About ten or twelve years ago the Film Forum had a series called “Out of the 70s.” This was before the book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls came out, certainly before docs like A Decade Under The Influence. In my memory, this series went on all summer. At the time I was living just a few blocks from FF, had a lot of free time and also had a friend (Rob H., you still around?) who worked as an usher and allowed me free roam of the place. (Don’t worry FF, I’m now a card-carrying member and have been for years, so karma and dues have been paid.)

Anyway, it was the greatest film series ever.

MoMI (formerly AMMI) has put together the poor man’s version of this series. They’re calling it Uneasy Riders and the schedule is on their website.

I think I will take Ann to see Klute because she likes mysteries and this movie is really one that works best on the big screen. (DP Gordon Willis was really knockin’ em out of the park during this stretch. The use of negative space and swaths of color in Klute and The Parallax View make me gurgle in ecstacy.) Also, I’ve never seen Drive, He Said, Jack Nicholson’s directorial debut and (supposedly) a great film.

One of my favorite films of all time, Fat City will screen on a day that I am out of town. I first saw it at the Film Forum series from years ago . . .I implore you to check it out. They end, appropriately enough, with The Last Movie. If it is the same print that Anthology Film Archives unveiled last summer, we are in for a (strange) treat.

I’m as interested in design as the next guy, but check out this article concerning the modest revisions to the Coke can. It isn’t the article so much as the pages and pages of impassioned commenting that is so striking.

Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn has their own Pale Male.

Very entertaining fantasy film in the spirit of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen or The Princess Bride. Should be quite successfull.

I rarely blog from work, but I just discovered that Film Forum will be showing La Chinoise from Oct 10 – Oct 18.  In the depth of my initial Godard-mania (Freshman/Sophomore year of college, natch) the only copy of La Chinoise I could find was in French with no subtitles.  And I watched it!

My French skills, while not at a Griswald level, are hardly adequate to follow a feature length film.  But I sat through the whole thing, ’cause, that’s what you do when you are that guy at that age.  Anyway, I’ll be thrilled to see (and hear, and understand) this for the first time in a theater.

Sarek is on board. Which is awesome, because it is almost like have Spock on board. Spock is even mentioned twice! Once by name! Hooray!

Though what’s with Sarek coming on board the Enterprise for a diplomatic mission only to get sick? Pretty dang similar to Journey to Babel, eh?

Anyway, it is touching to see how even a great man like Sarek falls victim to old age. That is handled well. I also like the idea that there is an alien race out there that can only survive in sparkly, multi-colored goo.

Picard’s psychedelic freak out post-mind meld, though, is a little over the top. Hey, Patrick Stewart, we all know you are a classically trained actor. . .do you have to ACT so much?

The Man was in full force this weekend.

Trying to swim at the same damned beach I swam at the week before, but I guess because it was July 4 weekend, The Man had to give me a hard time.

The Man, incidentally, is a 15 year old punk-assed punk!

- You can’t swim here!

- Huh?

- You have to swim in front of the lifeguard!

- But I swam here last week?

- You have to go over there.

- But everyone else is over there. I want to be over here.

- You can’t swim here.

- I’m not even swimming, I’m standing.

- You are up to your waist.

- It’s okay. I’ll be okay over here.

- But you can’t swim here.

- I absolve you. If I drown, my relatives won’t sue.

- You have to go by the lifeguard.

- But I can see the lifeguard from here. So she can see me. I’m okay over here.

- It isn’t that far over, just go over there by the lifeguard.

- Right it isn’t that far over.

- Right!

- Right! So go swim by the lifeguard.

So I went by the lifeguard. And then, a little later, I went back to where I was. And then had the same conversation with a different 15 year old punk. This went on for two days. I think it is a New Jersey thing. Should it happen the next time we go down (not for a few weeks, as we’re going to North Carolina) I will bring either a baseball bat or Jason Rozger.

A question a few people have asked.

Much of what I do isn’t visible to the web-reading public, but much of it is.

Here are some links to recent articles I wrote all or most of.

Beat The Heat Wave with UGO’s top 11 icy-cool flicks to chill out to
Top 11 Icy Cold Movies

Love or Hate Draco Malfoy
(I love him)

Love or Hate Gaius Baltar
(I hate him.)

Then there’s
Spike Lee on Broadway

Fantasy Same-Sex Hookups

Stephen King on Film

The Top 11 Gluttons

Awesome Canadians

I’ll post more every few weeks or so.

Formulas are used over and over again because they work, right? There’s nothing new under the sun? About three, possibly four minutes into Zhang Yang’s Shower I or anyone else who’s seen a few movies could’ve hit “pause” and laid out nearly scene for scene what was going to happen in the upcoming ninety minutes. It wouldn’t matter. You’d still be right there, pulling for these characters, laughing with them, crying with them. Oy, were we crying!

I have a theory. Actually, I’ve discussed this with people in the past and I think it might be true. It is called the sympathy period. When women live together they “time their cycles together” right? Well, I really do believe that men have their emotions tugged along with that ominous lunar pull. All I know is that every now and then I find myself acting really strange — and it turns out that Ann is about to get her period. What’s up with that?

The truth is that I was sobbing more than Ann was at Shower. And Shower isn’t even that good of a movie! It’s fairly a standard Miramax foreign film, aren’t-those-other-cultures-cute type of movie. There’s even a frickin’ retarded guy in it. A retarded guy! I’m the one who never saw I Am Sam because, post-Gump, I laid down a strict “No Retards” rule! (I still won’t see Radio, unless I am very drunk.)

Anyway, should you see Shower? Absolutely. Is it a good movie? No, it is formulaic crap.