I’m going to say this with all honesty – Day of the Vipers the first entry in the Terok Nor trilogy (which I read a few weeks back) isn’t just a good Star Trek book, it is a good book. Really. Night of the Wolves, the continuation, is a piece of junk, but an okay Star Trek book, if that makes any sense.
The first entry (by a different author) is a well thought out examination of how a culture (Bajor) could willingly give itself over to an evil empire (Cardassia.) The parallels with the Third Reich or the Bush Administration or even Coruscant are right there for anyone who wants it.
Part two of this Deep Space Nine backstory collection is just for the hardcore fans. We psychopaths who really thrive on intense scrutiny of every inch of the Trek Universe. The plot lumbers along spasmodically, introducing then dropping characters, with little dramatic tension – just plot plot plot – describing in full detail what the camera is seeing. It lacks the coherence or drive of a single television episode, it is just stuff on the page. Still, I read it rather quickly and already bought the just issued Book Three. So what does that tell you?
When I saw Gattaca at the Austin Film Festival over ten years ago I felt like I’d been hit over the head by a giant chunk of ice. I was wowed by both the film’s story and its form. Ten years later, I still love the look, but can not help poke some holes in the screenplay structure – some of the characterization, certainly. To be sure, I have exposed myself to a lot more sci-fi since then; maybe there isn’t enough of a wow factor at play here.
The look, though, the Italian Futurist meets Steampunk meets California Modernism….that is enough to keep you really engaged. Michael Nyman’s Glass-esque score (which you’ve heard many times, even if you’ve never seen the film) is a keeper as well.
It’s funny, because when this came out, followed by The Truman Show, it looked like Andrew Niccol was poised to be a major new voice in cinema. After Sim1one and Lords of War could it be that Niccol….hasn’t lived up to his potential?
This movie is even more disappointing because it had the potential for transformative greatness. Instead, it is a collection of marvelous imagery (what you see above is just the surface) but a bland, dare-I-say boring script. The little girl in the film is very cute, but there is no connection to the other characters or “the story” that is being told. When the little girl weeps for the fictional characters’ fates, I very nearly walked out of the theater. But I didn’t cause I knew there’d be more really cool costumes.
O! if only a visionary like Tarsem would team up with screenwriters who had a sense of true adventure. Why isn’t anyone adapting John Barth’s take on mythical storytime?
If I sound busy when you call me during the day it is because I am hard at work in the office.
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About 30 minutes too long, but a very amusing film. Loaded with style and personality.
A word about censorship. Firstly, Ichi the Killer is so blatantly a satire that it is silly to get up in arms about this film. It is not morally reprehensible in any way. Except….for one scene. See – I don’t mind the intense graphic cartoonish violence, but I don’t quite dig on the leering, lingering sexual violence toward women. Which does have a (brief) presence in this film. Even if it is meant to show that certain characters are evil or that they are all twisted in their psycho-sexual mishigoss. If you say “That goes to far!” in the presence of a Takashi Miike film it means you are a loser and you suck but, you know what, that goes to far. When you are going for satire (and not, say, Irreversible) then it goes to far. I call it like I see it.
Still, though, there is some amusing stuff in this disgusting film.
There’s some alternative timeline out there somewhere where everything is fair. Bush never became president, the Dodgers never went to California and Lee Feldman is a mutli-millionaire penning enormously popular songs.
For the people out there who think infectious, sarcastic pop begins and ends with the Fountains of Wayne, I’d like to introduce you to Lee Feldman. You can start with any of the three albums you see up top. They are all basically the same; all equally brilliant.
I warn you, though: listen to these songs and you’ll never stop singing them in your head.
1/2
O’Brien keeps finding himself flash-forwarding a few hours into the future. Lucky he does, as this is a very eventful day! He gets to stop his own death (twice!) and then the destruction of the entire space station.
There’s a wrinkle with this last one, as he trades places with his future self (three and a half hour future self.) Philosophy students, go nuts: is this the REAL O’Brien for the rest of the series? To the other characters, yes. But to him, no. He’s dead. He died. His consciousness travelled to the future and died and some other dude (who just happened to be him) came back. And that’s the facts, jack. Deal with it.
B-story: Romulans afoot asking questions about the Jem’Hadar and the Founders. Reminding us all at home that there’s a whole other story arc waiting at the other end of that wormhole.
Eegads. C’mon Voyager, if you are gonna rip off from TNG at least rip off a good episode, not a piece of (star) dreck like A Matter of Perspective.
Tom Paris, the insatiable bad boy cad who looks like a 50s soda jerk, is framed for murder. Tuvok’s mind-meld proves him innocent in a faux Agatha Christie reveal. Barf.
Science 1, Traditional Story Telling 0!
Maybe there’s wormholes everywhere, man, they’re just too small for us to see? If so, if there was one from Lower Broadway to Astoria that would certainly cut down on my commute!
Imagine a wormhole big enough only for a micro-probe a few centimeters wide?
And here’s one better (and provides a super 3rd act twist) a wormhole traverses space AND time, right? Who is to say that each end of the hole exists in the same temporal plane, eh? SLAM!
Anyway, after a lot of coaxing, the Romulan at the other end of the well promises to tell the Federation about Voyager’s plight – but will The Fates allow it?
1/2
The prophecy is coming true!!
Vipers in the sky! The gates of heaven burned! All sorts of mishigoss!
What I love about this episode is that it respects the prophets but doesn’t kowtow to “religion.” It is now firmly established that the prophets are simply an alien race that resides inside the wormhole and do not conform to linear time. Simple enough, but try explaining that to a dedicated Bajoran Vedek!
Anyway, this is a nail-biter, featuring some nice female Cardassian scientists as well as devious members of the Obsidian Order, showing that even the Cardies have depth to their civilization.
Voyager has to try just a little harder. Week after week DS9 is boldly taking Trek where it’s never been before, and Voyager is, y’know, kinda doing what TNG did, but not as well. I know – it is early days. I’ll keep an open mind.
Anyway, Voyager runs afoul of a Nucleogenic Cloud Being and while looking for more energy, somehow manages to nearly kill a sentient life form. Well, we think it is sentient – they don’t really get into that too much.
One thing that does annoy? There’s an energy crunch yet Tom Paris is allowed to run around the holodeck with his make believe French bar? Scare bleu!
You remember Spock’s Brain? Well, this is Nellix’s lungs.
A race of deteriorating meanies (or not so meanies, we later learn) needs to steal body parts to stay alive. Neelix gets de-lunged, but luckily The Doctor can keep him in a stasis with some holo-lungs, so long as he doesn’t move. I’m not 100% anti-Neelix. He’s all right. Some people treat Neelix like Jar-Jar Binks; I don’t see it that way. The problem, I feel, is that the rest of the crew is too quick to just say, “Oh, that wacky Neelix!” and let him do his schtick. I think Janeway should boot him off the bridge more – he should really only be there by request. Remember how Picard acted when Wesley went on the bridge? If not Janeway, at least Chakotay (who, as of now, is the worst defined character on the show) should get up in his grill. Isn’t he supposed to be an outlaw?
Herzog makes it seem so simple. Go someplace remote, turn on the camera, narrate it in that unmistakable voice and ba-boom, it’s another film on the shelf. It isn’t that way, of course. On the very surface, Herzog’s documentary canon may seem plotless, but there is a sense of exploration and fascination in his films that no one has ever had before or will likely have after he is gone.
This one is more Fata Morgana than Wild Blue Yonder in that it is very much about trying to know a place. The place in question is Antarctica. The star of the show is not nature, but the people who are drawn to this extremity. In fact, this might be Herzog’s most Errol Morris-like picture to date.
There are so many wonderful moments: the bucket-headed students in survival school, the non-conformist penguin rushing off to his destiny and death, the alien creatures at the bottom of a frozen sea, the celebratory guitar feedback jam at the discovery of a new species of single-cell organism, the woman who hides in a carry on bag, the man who talks about dead languages at 1 AM near the hydroponic tomatoes, the seals who make undersea noises “like Pink Floyd” ……on and on.
There’s a moment when we realize that the science station in Antarctica isn’t like an outpost on some distant world – it really is that. And it isn’t beautiful like EPCOT Center or Deep Space Nine. It is a place with dirt, noise, ice cream machines and power adapters with cords all over the place just like your desk. These are the times of miracles and wonders.
Keyword search for Herzog on this blog yields lots of goodies.
Awful, just awful. Not fun, not scary. Boring and incoherent. Makes you realize that 30 Days of Night was actually pretty good. I hate this movie so much. It’s not even a movie, it is a collection of stuff happening on the screen. No story, no context, just shit sandwich through and through.
The only thing going for this movie (and keeping it from being a full blown F) is that they had the audacity to kill off little kids and pregnant women in this movie. That’s the full width and breadth of originality on display.
Before anything else – I want Shappy Seasholtz to know that if I could’ve brought him I would’ve. It was a total last minute thing.
Anyway, the prophecy has been fulfilled: I met, albeit briefly, Leonard Nimoy.
It was at the 2008 Licensing Expo at the Javitz Center, where bare cereal boxes go to find branding. L-Nim was there for sixty short minutes, allowing Nerds to get polaroids with Spock. That’s all I did. I got a press pass, allegedly covering the event, zipped up in a cab, got my photo(s) and zipped back.
I waited on line, stepped up, said “Mr Nimoy, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” I pronounced Nimoy correctly. (It is NiMOY, not NEEEmoy.)
When I gave my Vulcan Salute he said, “Ah, very good!”
And that was it. I wanted to say something funny to him, or something M-O-T (like “You’re a Space Tzadik!”) but all I did after was smile.
Here is the moment from a different POV.
So – I got my picture taken with Leonard Nimoy. I guess it is all downhill from here, eh?
