Late August Trivia

I thought I would do an update covering all the random trivia that I don't want to cover individually.

Summer television is usually a bit rubbish as there is rarely anything new on. However the BBC broke this trend to give us the six-part Desperate Romantics which ended last night. At first I wasn't too sure if I would be interested in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood but the show turned out to be good fun and I quite enjoyed it's irreverence.

Special mention must be made of Amy Manson who played the tragic Lizzie Siddal and Jennie Jacques who played Annie Miller. I had never seen either of those actresses before and I was completely won over by them.

It looks like the DVD will be out next month.

By the way, there are high quality promo photos at http://musearchives.net/shootastic/index.php

Wuthering Heights finally crawls onto TV here after what has become the normal ITV delay. The new issue of the TV Times does the requisite swooning over Tom Hardy and proclaims the show a "staggering success".

Ruth Wilson will be back on the BBC in Small Island which I have mentioned before once or twice. I believe it will be on soon.

I went to see GI Joe in the cinema, mainly because Rachel Nichols is in it. When I got there the showing was canceled for technical reasons. I've not got around to going again. Not much of an anecdote but it give me an excuse to include a photo of Rachel as Scarlett.

A new move of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray is imminent and Penguin have put out a new edition of the novel with the movie art. I mention it because Rebecca Hall is on the cover. If you look closely you can just make her out.


Finally I have got to mention the Star Trek DVD on the German Amazon site. It comes in a box shaped as the USS Enterprise! You open up the saucer section to get at the disks! How cool is that!

Rachel Nichols enters my awareness

My burst of enthusiasm for July 2009 is actress Rachel Nichols. A few days ago I don't think I was aware of who she was. Then I watched a movie called P2 (as in parking level 2) and was very impressed. It was much better than I thought it would be and turned out to be a tense little thriller about a woman trapped by a obsessed security guard in a parking garage on Christmas Eve. I would quite readily compare Rachel's performance to that of Sigourney Weaver in Alien (which, coincidentally, I had watched again the night before watching P2).


Doing a little research it turns out she was in the fifth and final season of Alias. I was a big fan of Alias, at least for the first couple of years but I confess I never got to see the final season. I'll be looking for it on DVD if the price is right.


This summer Rachel is in the GI Joe movie. This will be certainly be excruciatingly awful, directed as it it by Steven Sommers, the man responsible for the dire Van Helsing. More fool me, I expect I'll end up renting GI Joe on DVD. For Rachel.

PS I think she was the green lady in the new Star Trek movie!

Star Trek movie - my first thoughts

I went to see the new Star Trek movie last night. Actually it was a very last minute decision. I had intended to wait until today. There was quite a good sized crowd in the cinema for it. I have to say it was a younger "cooler" crowd than would be normal for a Star Trek movie!

I have to admit at this point that I am a long time Star Trek fan. I've seen most of the movies in the cinema when they first came out, had the die-cast Dinky Enterprise toy as a kid, bought the novels and videos in the 1990s, and last week I bought the remastered DVDs.

Be aware of spoilers that may follow. I'll try to keep to general observations rather than a blow-by-blow account of the story.

The movie is very fast moving. The quieter moments are there but you can be sure the movie won't dwell on them for too long.

The opening sequence on the USS Kelvin was a strong one. The editing and performances were nicely handled as George Kirk is forced to stay behind on the doomed ship and talk to his wife who is escaping on a shuttle.

The young Spock being bullied by some snot-nosed Vulcans lets us discover how emotional he can be.

Bruce Greenwood was excellent as Captain Pike convincing Jim Kirk to enlist. I liked the scene on the shuttle where we get our first sight of Karl Urban as Doctor McCoy.

Zachary Quinto as Spock is good. I kept comparing his performance to Nimoy's in the old show so the fact I didn't hate him is a good sign. I think more than any other his is the part people will focus on most and he needs to make it his own and he did.

All through the movie Chris Pine plays a very cocky Kirk. The audience I saw the movie with seemed to love it. They were continually laughing, mostly at Kirk's lines and reactions, but also at anything Scotty did, some of McCoy's lines, etc. I like Simon Pegg but I felt he was overdoing the overreactions in the background. Still, he always got the big laughs so I guess that what the audience wants. The "Kirk with big hands" slapstick was a step to far, but again the audience seemed to love it. The movie maintains a jokey tone throughout with the exception of the opening sequence and the central "Vulcan sequence".

While avoiding spoilers I had more or less unintentionally discovered what happens in the middle of the movie. I wish I had not as the surprise would have been a major one.

Nimoy pops up as the older Spock from the future. Part of me feels his presence in the move was an unnecessary reminder of the first cast of actors who played these roles. On the other hand it works perfectly to tie the new movie into the series. By the time I saw his scene at the end of the movie I was comfortable with the role of "Original Spock".

I do like the new new look of the USS Enterprise. I think 75% of me loves it and the other 25% of me is complaining "but the engines are too close together!" Ah, I think it will grow on me...

Two observations about the Enterprise in the move. I would have liked to see a few more shots of the ship filling the screen. There's the "Titan arrival" sequence where she rises up out of the clouds and I'm reminded at what a stunning design the ship has. The other point is that we don't have a traditional engineering room. Instead it looks like they filmed in something like a chemical factory with lots of catwalks and big vats.

I would have liked to see more of Karl Urban as McCoy. In this movie he is only playing a supporting role. Uhura gets a much larger part than she did in the series along with a very surprising romantic partner.

It was great to see the classic gold, blue and red uniforms. Pointedly Kirk never wears the gold shirt until the very end of the move when he becomes the official captain of the Enterprise (much like Daniel Craig not saying "the names Bond, James Bond" until the very end of Casino Royale).

The cast was good. In hindsight Eric Bana didn't get too much to do as Nero but he made the most of it. The appearance of his ship and the casual way it swatted aside any opposition created a sense of jeopardy.

Michael Giacchino's music worked well. He stayed clear of the famous Star Trek theme pretty much until the end of the movie (again similar to the use of the Bond theme in Casino Royale).

At the end of the movie a few audience members started clapping. Actually clapping. At a Star Trek movie. What a strange world we live in where Star Trek is suddenly cool!

So that's the new beginning of the Star Trek crew. hopefully the next movie will be able to send them off on an adventure with a few quieter moments and a few more shots of the ship!

New Star Trek trailer is stunning

I don't normally make any comments about movie trailers but I really have to make an exception for the new Star Trek trailer. There is something suitably epic about it.

Near the start is a great line from Bruce Greenwood playing Captain Pike.

"Your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes. He saved 800 lives. Including yours."

Now, damn it, that's a great line. I want to see the movie for that line...

The music they use is wonderful. It's a track called "Freedom Fighters" by Two Steps From Hell. Works perfectly.

Other favourite moments.

"You will experience fear. Fear in the face of certain death."

McCoy: "We've got no captain and no first officer to replace him."
Kirk: "Yeah we do."

(Karl Urban sounds more and more like Deforest Kelly the more I listen to that line. And he looks a bit like Bones too.)

There's a wonderful shot of the USS Enterprise that I keep going back to. Just for a few seconds there is a sense of wonder and mystery as it approaches an alien ship.

And there's a foreboding shot that makes me a little bit concerned for the planet Vulcan.

There's other great stuff in the trailer from Eric Bana as Kirk's adversary. I won't call him a villain as from by accounts he appears to have an actual motive for what he's doing rather than just being evil for the sake of it.

Well, don't take my word for it. Check it out at http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/startrek/

New Starship Enterprise

There's a new Star Trek movie coming out in 2009 and Entertainment Weekly have revealed what the new USS Enterprise is going to look like.



Source: http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2008/11/star-trek-first.html

So far I like it well enough. My own favourite Enterprise would be the one from the early movies and this looks enough like it for me.

(To be honest I never did like the Enterprise-D from The Next Generation and I was more than happy to see it crash in Star Trek Generations!)