Ann saw me wasting my time, er, excuse me, reading this book and she asked, “Are those books actually any good?!” And I had a revelation – yes, usually, they are really entertaining. But this one, Book Two in the Five (and continuing) Vanguard series actually kinda isn’t.
I loved, loved, loved the worldbuilding in David Mack’s first Vanguard novel Harbinger, but the follow-up, authored by Dayton Ward and Kevin Dillmore, is desultory and dull. It lacks a singular narrative drive, a throughline, and has a never ending cast of expanding characters just drifting all over the place. It is, in short, a mess.
Still, it is a fun place to be, this space station in the nefarious Taurus Reach, and I’m not about to throw in the towel (especially as Mack is back for Book 3 – which I just ordered from Amazon.)
What it comes down to is this: I’ve been lucky with the Trek fiction I’ve read. I’ve read decent authors dealing with aspects of the expanded universe that I have an unquenchable interest in. But I recognize there’s a lot of dreck out there . . .and I’m hoping I don’t run into more.
Pandorum fills me with rage.
When there are so many awesome movies about generation ships itching to get made – we have to contend with this total crap.
It’s my fault, really, from expecting anything but utter dreck from producers Paul W.S. Anderson and Jeremy Bolt, two of the biggest bleachers of entertainment working in cinema. Why bother telling a story when you can have lame looking zombies fly around real fast? Just give yourself five minutes at the end to “wow” your audience with a false, Fight Club ending.
Eff this movie. Eff this movie hard.
As with many “omnibus films,” there are good bits and bad bits. Fear(s) of the Dark, a celebration of scary black & white animation, keeps its good stuff at the bookends. We open with a Kafkaesque initiation into intimate romance and end with a truly brilliant piece (directed by Richard McGuire) concerning a man fumbling through a snowed-in empty house.
The in-between stuff is never bad, but hovers around “okay.” In all, though, definitely worth checking out.
I haven’t watched this since its “Holy Shit!” sneak preview at San Diego Comic-Con, but I’m happy to say it (for the most part) holds up.
It really just zooms by and is a powerhouse of editing and pacing. I marvel at its ability to create a thorough world with, really, just a few bits of exposition. The resulting ambiguity, I feel, is much of the charm.
The second time I noticed just how truly great Sharlto Copley is. On the page Wikus van de Merwe is a straight up bad guy – and yet somehow you like the dude. Hats off.
Everything that was lame about the first movie is made worse here. There is zero emotional drive behind this movie. It feels, really, like what it is – kids making up an adventure as they play outside for the day. Adamson is truly a marvel of lethargic filmmaking.
And yet. And yet. How could I look myself in the mirror and totally poo poo any movie that has this many Minotaurs in it. TCON:PC is wall to wall Minotaurs. There’s even a blonde one. And one that goes “Shhhhh!” Just when you are tempted to turn the damned movie off, another awesome Minotaur appears.
So, you know, it’s got that going for it.
Dawn Treader comes out this Christmas – directed by Michael Apted. While the quite aged Apted isn’t my first pick for a vast fantasy epic, anyone is better than Adamson.
Another pretty damned good episode out of Enterprise that echoes the spirit of adventure found in TOS. Dammit if there’s more TOS here than in the TNG->DS9->VOY shows.
I’m very much enjoying watching Archer & co. act as interstellar neophytes, stumbling their way through the galaxy, falling back on T’Pol’s wisdom only when necessary. It is silly to position her as an antagonist, particularly since the fans will automatically love her. (Because she’s a Vulcan, of course, but also because beneath those striped, brown layers is a GIGANTIC RACK!)
Here I was all prepared to compare Cera and Youth in Revolt to Jesse Eisenberg and Adventureland. No such luck. Adventureland may be the better film, but it is much more conventional. Youth in Revolt has fun flights of fantasy, takes unexpected trips into profane and has, for lack of a better term, a far more indie feel.
Does anyone remember David O. Russell’s Flirting With Disaster? That’s the movie to compare it to, or maybe that’s because everyone takes hallucinogens in that one, too.
Arteta’s finest coup? Make references to La Strada, Breathless and Tokyo Story in the films first few scenes. What critic will give you a negative review after that?
Sometimes you love a movie but have a hard time explaining why.
The story of 3bME (as I’ve just dubbed this film) is wafer thin. But it is a) beautifully shot b) wall to wall marverlous performances and c) remarkable in its ability to place seemingly incongruent imagery together.
Dwight Yoakam, border patrol guard, off in the rocky, Rio Grande desert, alone with his gun, the silence shattered by . . .the Nokia ringtone. “I’m at work,” he says.
It’s a brilliant moment, and it is one of many.
Blind Levin Helm asking for assisted suicide doesn’t hurt either.
Altered States is one of the rare examples of a movie being better than its director.
Marvelous ideas, some truly sharp dialogue and some (still) fantastic special effects. Ken Russell kinda just piles it all on and keeps his fingers crossed. Lucky for him it mostly works. There are instances when the performances threaten to go off the rails, but this is a talented bunch, even if (I’m guessing) they weren’t given quite enough to go on.
Okay – I really have no idea what was going on on the set – but this is the only Ken Russell film I’ve ever seen that hasn’t been awful, and I just love it. I watch it every few years and it just gets better – even though you can tell the last twenty minutes or so are just rush rush rush. Maybe one day I’ll read the book.
All right, it is kinda fun to watch people plummet zillions of stories and still end up okay – and mind shaft cars out of control is never a bad thing – but this movie is pretty brainless even for brainless entertainment. And when you aren’t watching it in 3D you may keep wondering why people are spitting at the camera all the time.
A really funny, fast-paced, zing-filled script. Who doesn’t want to see hot dogs drop from the sky? The truth of the matter is that I enjoyed this more than I did Up.
The Galileo Seven meets This Side of Paradise as a marooned shuttle goes all crazy from psychoactive spores.
Our Southern chief of engineering lets his anti-Vulcan feelings out, but Archer keeps everyone balanced from the ship in orbit.
A decent enough episode.
Captain Archer does it HIS way, dammit!
Hardly a diplomat, Archer is sitting on the suggestions of his wizened Vulcan advisor so he can bring enlightenment to the galaxy.
I’m sure Picard would have gone back to that ship, too, but he wouldn’t have done it is such a “W”-like manner. I hope the edges of these cardboard characters start to smooth out soon.
1/2
And so begins my Enterprise voyage.
I’ve seen almost none of this show, so this should be interesting. But I’m going in optimistic and with an open mind.
I can say right off that I am not fond of the way Vulcans are portrayed and I don’t like the antagonism between Humans and Vulcans. I won’t be so brash as to say it breaks canon, because relationships will have time to change, of course, by the time, say, Captain Pike is en route to Talos IV. But. . .I dunno. . . it’ll take some getting used to.
As far as a “first episode,” though, this one may be the most successful of all of the post-TOS shows. It is energetic, tells an interesting story and gets you familiar with all the main characters. How long until TNG was it until we finally knew what the hell Worf was doing there?
So let’s do it. Let’s give the Quantum Leap guy a chance, shall we?
