Classic Pop

A couple of new trailers were released over the weekend with some blasts from the past. First, the new Aquaman trailer revealed, not only more action and a longer look at the film, but a glimpse of Jason Momoa donning the original costume...



I know that trailers can be deceiving, but they are really doing a good job of balancing action, visuals, and fun.

Me likey and I'll be there when it opens on December 21st.



Star Trek: Discovery also released a trailer for their upcoming second season and it revealed a lot of new surprises, including a first look at Spock...



I still refuse to pay for CBS All Access (it's cheaper to buy the DVDs each season, which I recently did for Season One), but I look forward to watching this new season next year when the DVD is available.

Until then, everyone else can watch it when it premieres on January 17th.

Good for you

The first full trailer for Glass was also released over the weekend...



I really like the cast, although I'll have to watch Split before I see this.

But it's looking pretty good, so far.

We'll see how it turns out when it's released on January 18th.



Star Trek: Discovery also released the trailer for their upcoming second season, which features the original Enterprise led by Captain Christopher Pike...



I refuse to pay for CBS All Access just to see this show, so am just going to wait until it either comes out on DVD or shows up on Netflix.

That being said, the second season looks good and I look forward to one day watching it to see how things play out this season with Spock showing up at some point.

No announcement on who will be playing him, but a part of me hopes it's Zarchary Quinto.

We shall see.

Queens of the Desert

CBS finally revealed the first photos from their upcoming Star Trek: Discovery series today AND the first full trailer...



I like it and am cautiously optimistic for now.



The series features Sonequa Martin-Green (The Walking Dead) as First Officer Michael Turnham (right) and Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) as Captain Philippa Georgia (left) and takes place before the original Kirk-Spock Star Trek.

After all of the delays (it was supposed to be ready in March) and lack of promotion, I was getting very concerned that it might get cancelled before it ever aired.



However, I think the effects, uniforms, and cinematography look pretty cool and, if they keep that up, we just might have a fun new Star Trek series to enjoy after all of these years.

The first season (15 episodes) is set to premiere sometime this Fall on CBS/CBS All Access.

Enjoyable.

Oh, MY

It turns out that Star Trek Beyond has boldly gone where no Star Trek has ever gone before by revealing that Mr. Sulu (in the new timeline) is gay...

One of the “Star Trek” universe’s most beloved characters is revealed to be gay in the latest installment of the iconic franchise.

John Cho tells Australia’s Herald Sun that his character, Hikaru Sulu, will have a same-sex partner, with whom he is raising a daughter, in “Star Trek Beyond,” which hits theaters July 22.

The 44-year-old actor said that he approved of the way his character’s sexuality will be handled in the film, in that writer Simon Pegg and director Justin Lin opted not to make it a major plot point. “I liked the approach, which was not to make a big thing out it, which is where I hope we are going as a species, to not politicize one’s personal orientations,” he said.

 Lin and Pegg’s decision to depict Sulu as a gay man was a nod to George Takei, who played the role in the original 1960s “Star Trek” television series and in six subsequent films, Cho said. Takei, 79, came out as gay in 2005, and has since gone on to become an outspoken advocate for LGBT rights.

You'd think George Takei, who is openly gay, would be happy about that. But, surprisingly, he was "disappointed".



He wasn’t cheering that the character he originated would bare his sexual preference, calling it “really unfortunate,” and saying that it wasn’t true to creator Gene Roddenberry’s vision for the character, and that the current filmmakers did not heed his concerns when he encouraged them to create a new character.

When I first read his response, I was surprised, yet understood. His character was straight. The actor playing him was not.

However, I started thinking that, since they are in an alternate timeline, his character could, realistically, be different (as many of the characters and their backgrounds are from the original series) in many ways.

So, as much as I enjoy George Takei (and he is enjoyable), I didn't actually think it was a bad idea.



Then, Simon Pegg, who plays Scotty and helped write the film's script, replied that he was also disappointed...with George Takei's response to the announcement.

“[Director] Justin Lin, [co-writer] Doug Jung and I loved the idea of [the gay character] being someone we already knew because the audience have a pre-existing opinion of that character as a human being, unaffected by any prejudice,” he said. “Their sexual orientation is just one of many personal aspects, not the defining characteristic. Also, the audience would infer that there has been an LGBT presence in the Trek universe from the beginning (at least in the Kelvin timeline), that a gay hero isn’t something new or strange.

“We could have introduced a new gay character, but he or she would have been primarily defined by their sexuality, seen as the ‘gay character’, rather than simply for who they are, and isn’t that tokenism?”

And, I kind of agree with Simon Pegg...if they had just created a a new gay character into the movie randomly, he/she would have likely gotten very little screen time (since many of the "regulars" barely get enough time as it is, especially Sulu) and it would have felt "forced" and then, likely, forgotten.

Then Zachary Quinto, who is also gay and plays Spock, responded with his disappointment as well.



“As a member of the LGBT community myself, I was disappointed by the fact that George was disappointed.” 

 He added: “I get it. He has had his own personal journey and has his own personal relationship with this character, but, you know, as we established in the first Star Trek film in 2009, we’ve created an alternate universe,” Quinto said. “And my hope is that eventually George can be strengthened by the enormously positive response from especially young people who are heartened by and inspired by this really tasteful and beautiful portrayal of something that I think is gaining acceptance and inclusion in our societies across the world, and should be.”

And I agree with him too.

So, at the end of the day, I'm totally fine with it.

Sulu is gay in this new universe.

I just want them to release the damn movie already!

For the Love of Spock

The first trailer for the upcoming Leonard Nimoy documentary, For the Love of Spock (directed by his son, Adam Nimoy), was just released...



The film premieres Saturday at the Tribeca Film Festival’s television-oriented “Tune In” program. The film’s second Tribeca screening on April 18 will be followed by a panel discussion with Adam Nimoy, Zachary Quinto, “For the Love of Spock” producer David Zappone and critic Scott Mantz.

Adam Nimoy raised $662,640 last spring through a Kickstarter campaign to complete the documentary. 

The project is aimed at celebrating the 50th anniversary of “Star Trek,” which aired for the first time on Sept. 8, 1966. Quinto, who portrayed Spock in the two latest “Star Trek” films, is narrating the doc.

I will definitely add this to my must-see list once it's released. He was awesome.

What?

I'm not crying....YOU'RE crying!

Grace Lee Whitney

Very sad news over the weekend...

Grace Lee Whitney, best known as Yeoman Janice Rand in the original Star Trek series, died on May 1 at her home in Coarsegold, Calif. She was 85. 





Whitney was fired at the end of Star Trek‘s first season, but she went on to reprise her role as Janice in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. 



She also guest-starred in a 1996 episode of Star Trek: Voyager that commemorated the 30th anniversary of the franchise.

It was always nice to see her pop up in the various Star Trek films and TV shows over the years.

She will be missed.

Spock Online Memorial

In honor of Leonard Nimoy's passing last week, the popular Star Trek Online multi-player game has added a couple of memorial statues into its environments so that fans can come by and pay their respects while playing.

Based on where our community chose to congregate and pay their respects, we will be replacing the central structure on the fountain on Vulcan with a stone statue of Spock with the inscription “Live Long and Prosper." We will be adding the same statue to New Romulus with the inscription “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”, as building toward Romulan and Vulcan reunification was one of Spock’s great life works. The Romulan Republic would not exist without his teachings.

One on Vulcan...



And one on New Romulus...





They are also placing memorial plaques around for the other Star Trek family members who have passed.



Nimoy also provided voice work for the game not just as Spock, but as a narrator as well, providing a small description of a new region of space whenever a player entered it for the first time. Here is a short video released when the game came out in 2010.



I think it's a pretty cool way for fans to interact with the passing of a fictional character within the "reality" of the world in which that character lived.

I may just have to start participating in this free online game/world.

It looks and sounds....fascinating.

Leonard Nimoy

Very sad news today...

Leonard Nimoy, the sonorous, gaunt-faced actor who won a worshipful global following as Mr. Spock, the resolutely logical human-alien first officer of the Starship Enterprise in the television and movie juggernaut “Star Trek,” died on Friday morning at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. 

He was 83. 

His artistic pursuits — poetry, photography and music in addition to acting — ranged far beyond the United Federation of Planets, but it was as Mr. Spock that Mr. Nimoy became a folk hero, bringing to life one of the most indelible characters of the last half century: a cerebral, unflappable, pointy-eared Vulcan with a signature salute and blessing: “Live long and prosper”. 

His zeal to entertain and enlighten reached beyond “Star Trek” and crossed genres. He had a starring role in the dramatic television series “Mission: Impossible” and frequently performed onstage, notably as Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof.” His poetry was voluminous, and he published books of his photography. 



He also directed movies, including two from the “Star Trek” franchise, and television shows. 

“To this day, I sense Vulcan speech patterns, Vulcan social attitudes and even Vulcan patterns of logic and emotional suppression in my behavior,” Mr. Nimoy wrote years after the original series ended. But that wasn’t such a bad thing, he discovered. 

“Given the choice,” he wrote, “if I had to be someone else, I would be Spock.”



I have been a Star Trek fan since I can remember, so his passing is especially sad for me. He was my favorite character on TV and I always looked forward to him showing up in various films and TV shows over the years.

Like him, if I had to be someone else...I'd likely choose to be Spock too.



His final Tweet on Monday could infer that he might have felt his time was near...



He will be greatly missed and fondly remembered.

Things that make you go...

Spock's expression kind of sums up how I felt after I got done watching Star Trek Into Darkness last night.

Perplexed. Conflicted. Excited. Disappointed. Bueller.

As most of you know, I loved the 2009 movie.

LOVED it!

So, I think I went into this one with my expectations a bit too high for the sequel to realistically satisfy, no matter how hard it tried.

That being said, I don't want to spoil anything (since most people will start seeing it this weekend). So, I'll keep this short...

I feel like the 2009 movie was great and "Into Darkness" is...good. It's like how I felt after seeing "Search for Spock" after the previous awesomeness that was "Wrath of Kahn".

Into Darkness has great action, visuals, and the characters are still developing nicely into real emotional people you can relate to, which is nice.

However, this film doesn't "grab you" like the previous one and, because of some of the questionable story choices, you just aren't as engrossed or surprised by what happens as the film wraps up.



So...if you loved or even liked the 2009 movie, you will likely enjoy this one too.

If you're a die-hard Star Trek fan with mixed feelings about the 2009 movie, you'll likely not be satisfied with this one.

If you hated the 2009 movie, you will likely hate this one too.

Honestly, I think that the people who will enjoy it the most are the people who really never watched or cared about Star Trek at all. They have no preconceived notions or expectations.

That being said, other than my feeling that they tried too hard to integrate familiar Star Trek references/storylines into this movie, it is still a really fun action movie with some great performances and "she can't take much more, Captain!" fun.

So...if you're going to go see it (and I recommend that you do), keep your expectations in check, get some popcorn, a giant beverage, and just relax and have a good time.

Speaking of a good time, watch this Honest Trailer for Star Trek 2009. It's very entertaining...



As is THIS funny Everything Wrong with Star Trek 2009 in Five Minutes...



I love that movie, but both of those videos made me laugh a lot.

Enjoy!

What's in Spock's scanner?

If you've ever wondered just what Spock used to see in that little private scanner on his station, well...now you'll know.







It's amazing how much can be conveyed with just a look or facial expression.

Hilarious.

Many Spocks

Here is a funny clip from the Robot Chicken show that spoofs the scene in the 2009 Star Trek movie where new Spock meets his future self. In this case...selves.



Entertaining.

Fascinating

Zachary Quinto casually came out this past weekend...

Actor Zachary Quinto, known for playing Spock in the 2009 "Star Trek" remake and his role as Sylar on the television show "Heroes," acknowledged his homosexuality in a post on his website Sunday, saying the action comes after the suicide of a 14-year-old who killed himself after apparently being harassed over his sexuality.

Rodemeyer's life has changed his, the 34-year-old Quinto wrote. "While his death only makes me wish that I had done this sooner, I am eternally grateful to him for being the catalyst for change within me. Now I can only hope to serve as the same catalyst for even one person in this world. That -- I believe -- is all that we can ask of ourselves and of each other."



He also discusses it on his blog and in a new interview with New York magazine...

For one thing, he’s willing to unambiguously talk about his sexual orientation. His eight-month role in Angels was both “the most challenging thing I’ve ever done as an actor and the most rewarding” he says. Having to inhabit that terrible lost world, if only in his mind, took a toll. “And at the same time, as a gay man, it made me feel like there’s still so much work to be done, and there’s still so many things that need to be looked at and addressed.”

Very true.

Blast from the Past

Two trailers for upcoming films based on previous movies were released this week. The first is the prequel to the X-Men Films titled X-Men: First Class.



Aside from the awful publicity photo, this looks like it could be a fun film about how the all the kids came together. I really enjoyed seeing how Kirk, Spock and McCoy all met in the reboot of Star Trek. We'll soon find out if Xavier and Magneto meeting will be anywhere near as interesting or compelling.



We're also getting a remake of one of my all-time favorite movies, Arthur.



I think Helen Mirren will be great (although John Gielgud will always be THE Hobson to me), but I'm not as sure about Russell Brand as Arthur. He's certainly British and acts immature, so that could work to his favor. But, he seems more wacky than real in this and it'll be interesting to see how that translates to making an audience care about him in the film.

I just hope this movie is not anywhere near as awful as the Bewitched remake that Nora Ephron wrote a few years ago.

I will never forgive her or the studio for putting together the perfect cast and then eviscerating the story and sucking every last ounce of magic out of, what was, such a fun and magically-entertaining show.



Endora will get your for that, Nora.

Space Relations

Slash Fiction has been around for a while, so I suppose that it was only a matter of time before someone used technology and fancy audio-editing, as this person did with Zachary Quinto's reading of the "Star Trek" movie novel, to take things to the next erotic level between Kirk and Spock.

I don't usually post NSFW stuff on the blog, but it's audio-only...so you can turn down the volume or just pop in your headset if you don't feel like sharing "Brokeback Enterprise" with the rest of the office.



I have seen the new "Star Trek" movie many times and I'm pretty certain that that particular scene was not in the film...

Boldly moving on

With all of the sad celebrity news the past couple of days (and the media's nauseating focus on every tiny detail about Michael Jackson and the world's apparent inability to cope with his passing), I thought I would just post a few entertaining Star Trek-related clips that I've seen over the past couple of weeks.

Here is a clip of Zachary Quinto (Spock/Sylar) freaking out last week while walking his dog...along with a man dressed as meat and a bloody butcher.



It's just one of those things that brings about more questions than anyone could possibly answer.

Here is a clip of Taylor Swift on the Country Music Awards talking about how she wants to be in the new Star Trek movie.



And, finally, here is a clip of the original "Star Trek" cast studying a very interesting phenomenon...



Maybe George Takei and William Shatner could finally resolve their longtime feuding by doing a CD together.

It would certainly sell tens of copies.

Stellar box office

"Star Trek" did a great job hanging on to audiences for the crucial second weekend (a time when some movies take a drastic drop and then fade away quickly). Here is what BoxOfficeMojo had to say:

Unphased by “Angels & Demons”, “Star Trek” excelled in its second weekend, logging an estimated $43 million. Reaching $147.6 million in just over ten days, it has eclipsed “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” as the highest-grossing picture in the franchise.

Slowing 43 percent, Star Trek effectively had the best second weekend hold for a Star Trek movie since “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock”, and it had a smaller decline than “Iron Man” last year.



Of course, the biggest difference with this movie, compared to past "Star Trek" movies, has been the overseas market response. This movie is, thankfully, drastically different according to DeadlineHollywood:

As of today, the pic's international cume is $70M over two weeks. This already makes Abrams' version the highest grossing international “Star Trek”, beating “First Contact” which did $57.4 million internationally.

No movie in the franchise has ever cracked $100M overseas before. But Paramount is predicting that this latest Star Trek should do around $150 international and around $400M worldwide.

So now Star Trek's worldwide cume is $216M.

Really good news for the zesty new Star Trek franchise.



Even President Obama, frequently referenced in the media as our Vulcan president, gave the movie a good review, according to Newsweek:

And the last movie you saw?
Now, movies I’ve been doing OK [with] because it turns out we got this nice theater on the ground floor of my house … So Star Trek, we saw this weekend, which I thought was good. Everybody was saying I was Spock, so I figured I should check it out and—[the president makes the Vulcan salute with his hand].

Very good?
Yes, absolutely.

Did you watch that when you were growing up?
I used to love Star Trek. You know, Star Trek was ahead of its time. There was a whole—the special effects weren’t real good, but the storylines were always evocative, you know, there was a little commentary and a little pop philosophy for a 10-year-old to absorb.

Just one more reason I enjoy having him in the White House...

Trek-tacular Box Office

The new "Star Trek" movie had the best opening weekend of any Star Trek movie to date. It made $76.5 million here in the US and another $35.5 million overseas, for a total of $112 million.

Before this, "Star Trek: First Contact" held the record for making $30.7 million its first weekend.



Reports seem to indicate that this film might be the first one to appeal to non-Star Trek fans as well, which is a good sign. We'll see how it fares over the next couple of weeks as "Angels and Devils" and the new "Terminator: Salvation" open.

Regardless...it's still great news.

Now that many of you have seen the movie, I can comment on a few elements of the movie that I enjoyed.



I really liked Faran Tahir as the captain of the USS Kelvin (the one at the beginning of the movie). I knew he looked familiar, but didn't place him until later as one of the main bad guys from "Ironman" (part of the group who kidnapped Robert Downey Jr.). He has a very strong presence in both films and is also quite enjoyable visually.



I really liked the entire sequence above, on and below the drilling device over Vulcan. It's amazing how realistic everything looked, from they way they filmed them dropping from the shuttle, diving, parachuting and landing on the mechanism. Very exciting to watch and we even got a classic "Red Shirt" moment worked in.



I really enjoyed the Spock-Uhura relationship (would gossip media refer to them as "Spuhura" or "Uhurock"?). I liked the way they casually eased into revealing it and thought that their scene together in the elevator was very emotionally effective.



I also saw an interview with Chris Hemsworth (he plays Kirk's father in the movie) and didn't realize until hearing him that he, like Eric Bana, is also Australian. You'd never know it from this movie, mate.



I also thought that Bruce Greenwood was very good as Captain Pike. He works all the time as an actor and is consistently engaging and fun to watch in everything he does.

Not sure why they threw in that ewokish creature that Scotty was hanging out with, but I'm hopeful that it isn't signed on for any sequels that will be likely coming our way in the future.

I boldly went...

The new "Star Trek" movie was even better than I had hoped.

Whew!

My friend Andrew took me to a special screening of the movie last night on the Paramount lot. As much as I've tried to talk myself into having low expectations (so I wouldn't be disappointed if it was bad), my hopes were pretty high as I sat down in my comfy seat.

Don't worry...I'm going to keep this review very general so that it doesn't spoil any of the many surprises and twists in the film.



That being said....here are some of my general thoughts.

Overall, it is certainly the best produced "Star Trek" film ever. The effects were top-notch, the sets were great, the action was pretty much non-stop, the soundtrack was epic and each of the actors did a great job playing well-known characters without doing hokey caricatures of the original actors who played the roles.

Even if you've never been a "Star Trek" fan, but like a good action/sci-fi movie, I think you'll really enjoy the film.



Chris Pine, Zarchary Quinto and Karl Urban really do a nice job with their characters Kirk, Spock and McCoy. Seeing them all meet for the first time and, over the course of the movie, begin to get to know each other and build the strong bond that we all remember and love was a lot of fun.



It was also refreshing to see the supporting characters get much more screentime than they've ever received in past movies or the original TV show. Uhura, with her ear-piece in place, gets far more to do than just toss out a "Hailing frenquencies open" now and then.



Even watching a very young (he's 17 in the film) Checkov wrestling with his English dialect and actually looking Russian (unlike the original with his Monkees haircut) was enjoyable.



And, as the villan Nero, Eric Bana is unrecognizeable and quite effective as a sullen skull-tattoo'd Romulan seeking vengence against the Federation and, specifically, Spock. He's not as theatrical as Ricardo Montalban's "Kahn", but he's definitely got his moments.

Plus, the inclusion of Leonard Nimoy's Spock into the story really ties the original series and the new movie reality together nicely. Does it feel a bit convenient? A little, but you can forgive it because of the greater storyline possibilities for future Star Trek movies that it creates.



The most difficult part of the movie, for me, was...when it was over.

Other than my friend Andrew (who is not a Star Trek fan at all, but really enjoyed the movie...a good sign for all of you non-Trekkies out there), I had no one to discuss it with. My excitement and enthusiasm was bursting and it took all of my strength and restraint to not just call a friend and spoil the whole movie for them by spewing every miniscule detail, surprise and plotpoint that I had just experienced.

But, I didn't.



Bottom line...

If you've always been a fan (die-hard or casual) of the original series or any of the series that followed....you should really enjoy it.

If you've never really watched "Star Trek", but usually love a good action/adventure/sci-fi blockbuster....then you should also enjoy it.

If you hate "Star Trek" and/or anything Science Fiction related, then, although I think you could still enjoy it, you probably weren't planning to see it anyway.

If that's you, then I'm sure Matthew McConaughey will be thankful that you and four other people opted to see his film "The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" instead.

Being a new Dad...he definitely needs money for diapers and tanning lotion.