TV/Movies Megathread

[Barrister]

Well a YT-1300 Correllian light freighter

That did the Kessel run in 12 parsecs!

Not 14!  Everyone gets that wrong.

[celedhring]

Well a YT-1300 Correllian light freighter

That did the Kessel run in 12 parsecs!

I geeked out when they used the actual model name in The Force Awakens 

[Ideologue]

I don't think Beeb would contradict any specific counterpoint, but I read his point as "there's nothing narratively essential about the Enterprise."

Limited to the idea that the Enterprise is special and beloved and unique, I think you're right, too.

And on further consideration, from a commercial standpoint, and given that the non-Enterprise shows have been underperformers, even the stronger form of your claim--which I happily concede you weren't making--maybe does have some weight nonetheless.

Except for the show named after the damn thing...

Berkut is right that the USS Enterprise is definitely iconic.  BUt I still don't think it's magical - that the name of the ship has a damn thing to do with the success or failure of the show.  I think most fans would just as gladly watch a Star Trek show based around another ship - or even based around non-Star Fleet characters!

Well, I meant Voyager and DS9.   (Voyager wound up in the black, but my understanding is that pre-Seven, it was in trouble.)

Anyway, I think this means my paraphrase of what you said, at least, was accurate.

[katmai]

YO Ide, have you embraced the Yinzer life yet?

And man seems to be a lot of production going on in your neck of the woods now.

[Ideologue]

Beeb said, paraphrasing, "They should make a show without the Enterprise.  It's not essential."

Berkut said, not paraphrasing, "WTF is wrong with you?"  And then you said an Excelsior show would be great.  Frankly, you seem to be at war with yourself over the issue.

Or certainly the most complete.  TOS had a certain charm to it, and the middle seasons of TNG were also quite good.  While I certainly prefer DS9, I don't take issue with people who like some of the other works better.  But what you can't deny is that DS9 did more than any other series to create a universe for Star Trek to live in.

Oh, I don't take issue with 'em.  TOS is a colorful, wonderful pop experience, and remains iconic for a reason, even if (taken as a whole) it's barely coherent.  The TOS movies are obviously great overall, too (I've said before I'd trade all 80 episodes to save the films, if that was the choice I had to make).  TNG likewise is fantastic.  Voyager... well, it sucks, and so does Enterprise, but there's no accounting for taste.

DS9's completeness, as you put it, is definitely its signal virtue.  Season 7 is a mess, the first two seasons fluctuate between basically okay and boring, but its treatment of the Dominion, the Cardassians, the Klingons, the Romulans, and even the Federation itself--that is, of the Star Trek universe--is by far the most coherent and fascinating world-building in the whole franchise, which otherwise has always taken its cues from TOS' Silver Age Comics, "and then they met a space god" style of storytelling, even when (as in TNG) there was some vague commitment to continuity.

For my part, I'd rather see a Trek show with no Enterprise simply because the Enterprise is kind of played out, and the Trek cosmos is so much bigger than just one starship.

Yeah, the original cast films were pretty great. 

I feel like a ship named the Enterprise isn't essential for a Star Trek show, but it's very helpful.  Remember how you felt at the end of Star Trek IV when they introduced the Enterprise-A?  There's an emotional connection to the name.  We didn't get all choked up when Sisko got his second Defiant. 

I feel like season 7 of DS9 was a bit of a mess because it had to be so dense.  Getting themselves to a place where the Dominion War could end, while at the same time getting Sisko to embrace his destiny was a lot of work.  I'm also not super-thrilled about how Dukat was handled, even though I absolutely loved the character and Alaimo's performance.

Voyage Home's ending is a great triumphal end to the II-IV trilogy, no doubt about it.

And, yeah, when I talk about the final season of DS9 being a mess, I'm almost entirely talking Dukat.  (The Breen are messy, too, I guess--it is anybody's guess why they join the losing side of the war, other than the prospect of some Cardassian territories that they could have seized more easily through military force, by joining the winners--but they're just too cool not to enjoy.  And I suppose it helps the drama when the Dominion gets some new allies, and isn't quite so obviously Germany in late '44 in terms of ability to win the war or even fight the Allies to a standstill.)

But the disconnect between the pagh-wraiths/Dukat/Emissary stuff and the Dominion War is crazy, especially given that the Prophets, the pagh-wraiths' mortal enemies, are also the only thing keeping the Dominion from swooping in with reinforcements that would dwarf the Alpha Quadrant powers and end the war in weeks.  It almost seems impossible that those two threads weren't tied together.  It's a real problem in the finale, which is thus obligated to climax twice, to provide an ending to two completely separate (and somewhat tonally dissonant) storylines.

[Ideologue]

YO Ide, have you embraced the Yinzer life yet?

And man seems to be a lot of production going on in your neck of the woods now.

I use "yinzer" as an epithet, if that means anything.  I hate it here.  I mean, I enjoy living with my girlfriend, obviously--not necessarily in this shitbox of a house, although the house has grown on me and I'm not as afraid as I used to be about the natural gas causing an explosion--but I miss Columbia.

But yeah, lots of film stuff.  Haven't run into any of it, but I'm not downtown too often.  It was a while back, but Jack Reacher was filmed here iirc.  I don't think I've seen anything from it I recognize though..

[Ideologue]

Ide, go watch the film I'm talking about in the Korean thread. I think you'll like it.

I will.  Did you happen to see Memories of the Sword, by chance?  Good wuxia* flick from the RoK, came out last year.

*Presumably, the Korean language has another name for this, but it's really determined to be part of that genre.

Nope, I'll keep it in mind though.

I watched it as an antidote to the latest wuxia film to earn itself the status of a cause celebre in the arthouse world, The Assassin.  Jumping off from what Yi said, I'd rather watch Barry Lyndon twice, at a full six hours, than watch The Assassin again, even though it's only a hundred minutes.  (And I'd watch Ben-Hur thrice.)  As beautifully filmed as it is, it is on the short list of the most boring fucking movies I've ever struggled through.  Imagine Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with fewer and lesser stunts, 80% fewer lines, not the barest fraction of the emotional resonance, and no recognizable acting whatsoever.  It was worse than Wong's The Grandmaster, which also sucked something fierce, but at least was kind of doing something.  It's exhibit A if you ever want to accuse film critics of being out-of-touch, and of generally bandwagoning on a niche product that does one thing really well (in this case cinematography), but is essentially alien to mainstream audiences and made with what appears to be a deliberate anti-populist ethos--which, in our hypothetical indictment, feeds into the elitist critic ego.

I mean, seriously, I guess there aren't any well-photographed films that are also good, so we have to reify the well-photographed film that isn't?

[celedhring]

Star Trek I-IV is great as a film series - even if the films may be uneven themselves (I do like Star Trek I a lot, though). But the entire narrative thread that ties them together is very well done, engrossing, and something really missing from the Trek films that followed.

[Ideologue]

Star Trek I-IV is great as a film series - even if the films may be uneven themselves (I do like Star Trek I a lot, though). But the entire narrative thread that ties them together is very well done, engrossing, and something really missing from the Trek films that followed.

I love The Motion Picture.  I wouldn't put it with II-IV though.  They're really different beasts (action-oriented, versus cerebral, 2001-esque quasi-nonsense)--indeed, one of the reasons I like TMP so much is that it's so unique, at least as far as the Trek films go.  It's the only one that has a serious name-brand director in Robert Wise, it's the only one that comes close to capturing Roddenberry's late-life idiosyncrasies, and while it is not the only one where they meet a space god, it's the only one that isn't on-its-face stupid about it.  It probably helps that I've read Alan Dean Foster's novelization, which takes into account a lot of Roddenberry's post-TOS weirdnesses: essentially, Starfleet is a band of societal outcasts and cultural throwbacks, deemed fit for space exploration because they're not the lazy, happy hippies that populate the rest of the Federation, and (naturally) there's some weird sex stuff.  Of course, this really only comes through in TMP's costume design (the unthreatening pastels and the tightness around the dick) and in the half-abortive creation of Ilia, the sexy Deltan super-slut who has to have a vow of chastity on record before she can come aboard a starship.  But it is there, and I dig it, and it makes me regret, a little, that Star Trek Phase II (upon which TMP was based) never came to fruition in its intended form, since it's just a wonderfully fascinating and bizarre vision of the future as seen from the past, after being filtered through the lens of a slightly insane person's eyes.

Then again, we do have seasons 1 and 2 of The Next Generation, which also embody that same kind of High Roddenberryism, and since it's not necessarily the prettiest sight, maybe it's for the best that Phase II never got off the ground.

[Liep]

More people!

[Maladict]

Wow, Eddie? Really? He must be incredibly bored.

[katmai]

But yeah, lots of film stuff.  Haven't run into any of it, but I'm not downtown too often.  It was a while back, but Jack Reacher was filmed here iirc.  I don't think I've seen anything from it I recognize though..

It seems like a bit of tv shows as well. Have some friends from area who have moved back because of the amount of work.

[celedhring]

So somebody has shot an entire film in first person view, and embraced the FPS aesthetic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sca9U6IlAns

I guess it will be interesting to watch, just from a scholarly POV. I can see myself getting dizzy after 20 minutes or so and turning it off though.

The chick looks exactly like Jennifer Lawrence without being Jennifer Lawrence. Somehow that unnerves me.

[Grey Fox]

More people!

I don't know who these people are.

I already miss Jeremy

[Eddie Teach]

I only recognize Matt Le Blanc.