While watching the Hong Kong episode of Bizarre Foods the other night, we saw a segment where Andrew Zimmern went to shoot a Hong Kong-style Kung Fu fight scene, and the introduction for that segment included a few seconds from a movie called Kung Fu Chefs. We were instantly intrigued and I just had to go look it up, and like everything else that has ever graced a screen somewhere in the world, it was on YouTube.

The movie, made in 2009 and starring famous Kung Fu movie star Sammo Hung, is basically a blend of Iron Chef (which we love), old-school Kung Fu flicks, and The Karate Kid. It comes complete with a cooking competition in a knockoff of Kitchen Stadium, a main character named Ken’ichi (which had us wondering if this should be called The Chen Ken’ichi Story), a culinary version of Mr. Miyagi, and ridiculously elaborate food preparation. It’s an over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek parody of the Kung Fu movie genre and a send-up of how seriously some people take food.

The plot focuses on … well, actually the plot doesn’t matter. What matters is that the first scene of the movie has chef Sammo Hung slicing his way through a whole pig carcass with just one cut using the Dragon’s Head Blade — a family heirloom whose use must be preceded by the offering of incense to the ancestors — and then getting into a scrum with five guys wielding Chinese cleavers when he finds out someone had sabotaged his pork. The movie pretty much leaves all traces of reality behind at that point — and we’re not even at the opening credits yet — so just strap yourself in for some cheesed-out fun, over-the-top acting, and shots of drool-inducing culinary creations.

Here’s the movie on YouTube in 10 parts. It’s in Cantonese with English subtitles. If you have a really fast Internet connection, you can see it as a higher-quality file here, in Mandarin with English subtitles.

That’s why I was pleasantly surprised to discover Electric Shadows (梦影童年) while browsing through the foreign-language films on Netflix Instant Play. Hey imagine that, a Chinese movie that doesn’t involve martial arts, special effects, a couple hundred thousand extras, or (shudder) Jackie Chan. Electric Shadows, made in 2004, is a nostalgia-inducing (well, for the Chinese who grew up in the 70s anyway) piece of work that uses the story of a single mother and her daughter as a vehicle to take a trip down the memory lane of Chinese cinema and small-town life. There are spots where the movie does give you a rather heavy dose of mushy melodrama, but overall, it’s a delightful film and definitely worth checking out.

The movie is available on Netflix and also in multiple parts on YouTube:

This entry is cross-posted at my book blog: thezhus.posterous.com.

My research on 1980s Guangzhou led me to the discovery of a 1984 Chinese film called Yamaha Fish Stall (雅马哈鱼档). It’s a story about a trio of young people who start a fish stall in early 1980s Guangzhou, just as economic reforms were encouraging many people to start their own businesses (although judging by the way the main character, Ah Long, dresses and some of the hilariously bad English subtitles on the DVD, you would swear there’s a “Guangzhou Gigolo” subtext running through the movie). The film was a big hit, in part because it was an accurate depiction of early 1980s Guangzhou, and in part because it advocated for the economic reform policies and showed the results that could come from them.

Unfortunately, I was only able to find little fragments of the film online, and there are no English subtitles in any of them. If you are interested in getting a glimpse what life was like in my hometown during the early years of my childhood, as well as a chance to keel over laughing at the unintentionally dirty subtitles (we’re not entirely sure about the “unintentional” part), I’d suggest buying the DVD.

The thing that led me to the film in the first place was an interview in one of my books with the author of the short novel upon which the movie was based. In it, he discusses the inspiration for the characters, the societal changes that were going on when the novel was written, and the impact of the film. Here’s a translated excerpt:

Yamaha Fish Stall was created against the background of the rapid development of Guangzhou’s private enterprises after economic reform and opening up.

After the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Party, Guangzhou was a step ahead in reforms. Guangzhou’s private enterprises began developing very rapidly. My deepest impression was that Guangzhou’s streets were lined with peddlers selling T-shirts, socks, umbrellas, shoes. There were many peddlers. Even though the streets seemed very messy, they also conveyed a very vibrant feeling.

You couldn’t see this kind of scene before. Guangzhou may be the land of fish and rice, yet you couldn’t buy fish here. Back then, each family had several fish stamps per year, and still it wasn’t guaranteed that you would be able to buy fish. Even if there were any for you to buy, it was salt-water fish or dried fish. Back then, you would be thrilled to be able to just buy a couple dace. …

After reforms and opening up, control on fish prices were loosened up and you could buy fish anytime. At the time I was living in the dormitories of Guangzhou People’s Hospital on Bailing Road. Next to the dorm there was a market, where people sold fish, roast geese, and there was a hair salon. It was all very bright and colorful. Among all those stalls, the most interesting was the fish stall, because the stall owner rode a motorcycle. On the back of the motorcycle was a water tank, which he used to transport fish to the stall. I still remember that his motorcycle wasn’t a name brand like Yamaha, but rather a brand made in Chongqing. By today’s standards, that fish stall couldn’t be simpler. It was just a simple piece of colorful tarp with bamboo poles on the sides and a fish hanging from it as advertising. The fish was still alive and kept flapping its tail. This showed that society was slowly changing. Overall, society as a whole was beginning to become vibrant, and people’s state of mind was vastly improved as well. …

The inspiration for the main character Ah Long was one of my students. … One day I was walking along the street when suddenly someone tapped my shoulder from behind. I turned around and looked, and it was one of my students from back when I was teaching in high school. This student didn’t look like any special and didn’t carry himself well. He said, “Mr. Zhang, I haven’t seen you in a long time.” I asked him what he was doing now. He said, “I’m doing pretty well. Let me take you out for dimsum.” I tried to decline, but he said, “Mr. Zhang, you have to go. Let me take you to the Eastern Hotel for dimsum.” In 1983, the Eastern Hotel was not somewhere that ordinary citizens could go, and to be honest I hadn’t been there. So I asked him whether he had struck it rich. He told me this: “I’m living like a human being now.” That had a big impact on me, so I went with him to the Eastern Hotel for dimsum. We talked over tea, and it was then that he told me he had started his own private business.

I was this student’s home-room teacher. He used to have a problem: His conduct wasn’t very clean, his performance wasn’t good, and he didn’t do well in school. But I still was very attentive toward him. I asked him what kind of work he was doing now, and he said he was selling fish. He said he could make up to 300-some yuan a month selling fish. Good heavens! At that time my salary was just 80-some yuan, and his income was four times mine. He said he was very grateful for my kindness toward him in the past, so that’s why he wanted to treat me to dimsum. He told me some of his life experiences. At the time I thought, “This wayward kid has found a proper path, become a private entrepreneur selling fish, found a career, and found a pretty good situation for himself. To use his own words, he was living like a human being now. So I was very touched.

Actually, he represented the majority of the people who were starting private businesses. These young people’s way of thinking isn’t too high. To use my student’s words, for them this is scrounging a living. But human beings — if you can give them work, a legitimate job — generally will strive upward. Human beings can change. People don’t want to do improper, immoral things; it’s only when they have no other way out. The problem was that our society didn’t provide such a platform. That’s why once the economic reforms and opening up were implemented, many people changed.

…

Before I wrote Yamaha Fish Stall, I had already published a lot of work. … Because I was publishing a lot of fiction at the time, my work was often published in the newspapers. … Although there were a lot of people submitting their work, my submissions still were often published, such as essays, short stories, one-act plays. … I drew upon my real-life inspirations and wrote Yamaha Fish Stall as a short novel.

Yamaha refers to the motorcycle, with a equipment box on the back. My thinking is relatively liberated. Even now I think my thinking was even ahead of the young people at the time. Liberation of thought is very important to a writer. So why use Yamaha? I was thinking: One, this name sounds good, very unusual, very strong. Second, Yamaha motorcycles is a foreign business. In our reforms and opening up, what we are doing is bringing in things from outside. Later, when we were making the movie, a well-known veteran editor reviewed the script and said the title won’t work. But I insisted that it would. I said you can edit the story, but the title cannot change. So in the end they kept the title. …

The draft of the novel was about 6,000 characters, and I submitted it to the Yangcheng Evening News. A well-known editor at the newspaper wrote me a letter after he read it and asked me to go to his office to discuss it with him in person. He said this story was about a fresh topic and full of life. However, the Yangcheng Evening News only had four pages for submitted content, and to run the entire 6,000-some characters would take up an entire page. So he suggested that I shorten the draft. I asked if it would be possible to run it on an entire page. He said, “You’re not famous. How can we give you an entire page?” … He suggested I condense the story to 3,000 characters. But I felt if I took out that much, the story would lose its flavor. He gave me a few days to think it over. A few days later, he wrote me a very long letter. I was so moved; he was such a dutiful editor. His handwriting was very neat, and he wrote about six or seven pages. His letter said that my view was correct, that to turn 6,000 characters to 3,000 will leave only the skeleton, without flesh or blood, without meaning. He suggested I turn this into a medium-length novel and submitted to the publishing house, otherwise such a good subject would be wasted.

After returning to campus, I collaborated with one of my students and turned Yamaha Fish Stall into a medium-length novel and submitted it to Flower City magazine. Later this novel received the inaugural Flower City Literary Award, and Flower City magazine’s readership base was very large. An executive from Pearl River Films saw this novel and said it was very good.

At the time, Zhang Liang was a nationally known directory. When he saw this novel, he said I should turn it into a movie script because they would like to make it into a movie. Later, Pearl River Films put us up in their guest house to let us turn the novel into a script. We stayed for about a month, and the script was approved after only one round. It went very smoothly.

Zhang Liang’s thinking was very liberated, very innovative, and he embraced new things. He suggested that this movie should be as authentic as possible, so we should use real independent shopkeepers as actors. … Only the main character Ah Long and one other role used professional actors; everyone else was an amateur.

In using amateur actors, I felt Zhang Liang was very brave, very bold. This was no simple matter. What if they didn’t do a good job and ruined the film? So everyone was still a little worried at the time. These amateur actors received one week of training. During the shooting, usually the director showed them how to do something, and then they just went along by feel, and in the process, they showed their authenticity.

…

After Yamaha Fish Stall was released, most people’s reaction was pretty good. They held a film festival at Beijing at the time, and we showed this movie at Beijing University. It played nonstop from 7 p.m. one night to 6 a.m. the next morning. After the movie, many of the leading figures and famous directors on the Beijing movie scene, about 200-some people, all stood up and applauded for a long time. … They said they had never seen a movie so full of life..This movie reflected our lives, our time. This story, these things were happening in Guangzhou. At that time Beijing had not yet had such scenes. Upon seeing this movie, they said it was as if they could smell the stench of Guangzhou’s fish. They joked that it would be great when you can smell that in Beijing as well. More importantly, the movie let them experience something — economic reforms and opening up. Back then the slogan was there, but there still weren’t many tangibles and the people didn’t have a deep impression of reforms and opening up. But movies are imitative, and this movie gave people a strong experience. At the film festival, Beijing University students said, “Guangzhou’s present is our future. We love this kind of life.”

…

Later this movie was even selected as one of the 100 most influential movies in the history of Chinese cinematography. … Why? Because it was very representative. It was the first movie to reflect reforms and opening up and acted like a mile marker. Looking at it today, this film also had another special quality — it reflected the lives of the Cantonese people during reforms and opening up in the early 80s. … To understand life in Guangzhou in the 80s, to understand their attitudes toward life, you have to watch Yamaha Fish Stall.

…

Of course, there were dissenting opinions about the film at the time. Some said this movie was about money, and what is money? It’s the source of all evil, and that this was a revisionist film. This showed that at the time people’s way of thinking hadn’t changed completely yet. I felt that such opinions were normal at the time, because people’s views were still relatively traditional.

For a piece of work to be able to illicit such a big reaction from the audience and leave a deep impression, it’s because of one of two reasons: One, it really is a classic, such as War and Peace, Pride and Prejudice, and such. Second, some work can’t qualify as classics, but they were created at certain key turning points in history and carried a big message. Yamaha Fish Stall became such a hit because it was created at such a turning point — the key moment in China’s shift from planned planned economy to market economy.

We just re-watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade over the last couple days and it really struck me how dated the special-effects sequences in the movie look … and how little that mattered in my enjoyment of the movie, either back then or today, when we’ve seen much, much better special effects. It’s not hard to figure out why: The terrific storytelling and the humorous and witty banter between Harrison Ford and Sean Connery more than make up for whatever shortcomings there were in the effects, and the movie was a showcase for the story and the dialogs rather than for the special effects.

The dated effects were especially obvious during the dogfight scene when Indy and his father were fleeing from the Nazi blimp:

Nice sky in the background, isn’t it?

If you saw something like that in a movie today, you would laugh at how bad the effect looked. And yet, even when I rewatch this movie today, that doesn’t get in the way of my enjoying the film at all. I think it speaks volumes about what Hollywood blockbuster movies focus on these days compared to 20 years ago, and it’s a shame. Give me 10 Last Crusades over the mindless, CGI-laden crapfest that is the Transformers movies, that abomination of a Star Trek film, or the thoroughly mediocre fourth installment in the Indiana Jones series. Compare that last Indiana Jones movie with The Last Crusade, and the difference in the approach to movie-making is stark. For instance, one scene from The Last Crusade had Indiana Jones and Nazi stooge Elsa crawling through the sewers under Venice looking for an ancient coffin. They run into a giant pack of rats and at one point, they’ve got rats all over them.

What is this? Real rats?

Just imagine if they shot that scene today. Would they use real rats? Dream on! They’ll probably just plop the actors in front of a green screen and add in some CGI rats later. And they’ll probably end up looking about as real as that CGI gopher or the ants army from the last Indiana Jones movie.

Now that I think about it, the same holds true for computer games as well — really great story-telling trumps deficiencies in graphics. That’s why those old Monkey Island games are still a joy to play, despite not having voices or super-amazing graphics, and why I still keep an OLD computer around just for the times when I get in the mood to play those games again. Computer graphics have made leaps and bounds since those games came out, but the story-telling aspect of computer/video games haven’t really improved (if anything, they’ve regressed). That’s why I’m very happy to see a company like Telltale Games (the name says it all, doesn’t it?) picking up where those great story-telling games left off.

Now, if only we can get someone in Hollywood to follow suit …

Sound familiar? It should. It’s basically a dead-on impression of that abomination of a Star Trek film last year, and what makes it even funnier is that this came a couple years before that Star Trek film, and then J.J. Abrams went and did exactly what Stargate was making fun of. You can’t even make up stuff like this. To call this clip a parody of the Trek movie would be to deny the eerie resemblance between the two, except one was meant to mock and the other actually thought this was a good idea.

One of the other reasons that we love Stargate is how it constantly rips off old Star Trek plots and admits as much with not-so-subtle tips-of-the-hat to Trek (not to mention a procession of former Trek actors as guest stars on the show). In the same episode as the previous clip, they also did a Star Trek parody:

Once again, the portion after the parody clip makes fun of so many of the things that made the last Star Trek movie so horrible. I wonder if the planning meetings for that Trek movie were anything like this, except not in jest.

We just finished watching Cranford on Masterpiece on PBS. While we were watching, it seemed like we had seen every other member of the cast in a film adaptation of a Jane Austen novel. And this is why IMDB exists. Here’s a list of the cast members of Cranford who also appeared in an Austen film (many of the cast also were in Jane Eyre and The Queen):

Martha: Claudie Blakley
Austen film appearance: Pride & Prejudice (2005) as Charlotte Lucas

Miss Matty Jenkyns: Judi Dench
Austen film appearance: Pride & Prejudice (2005) as Lady Catherine de Bourg

Dr. Harrison: Simon Woods
Austen film appearance: Pride & Prejudice (2005) as Mr. Bingley

Miss Pole: Imelda Staunton
Austen film appearance: Sense and Sensibility (1995) as Charlotte Jennings Palmer

Jessie Brown: Julia Sawalha
Austen film appearance: Pride and Prejudice (1995) as Lydia Bennet

Sir Charles Maulver: Greg Wise
Austen film appearance: Sense and Sensibility (1995) as John Willoughby

Major Gordon: Alistair Petrie
Austen film appearance: Emma (1996) as Robert Martin

Mr. Holbrook: Michael Gambon
Austen film appearance: Emma (2009) as Mr. Woodhouse.

And of course, we know Gambon better as this guy:

Looking at the list of movies I saw in theaters this year, I won’t have guessed that Zombieland would be the best of the bunch (which includes disappointing summer blockbusters such as Star Trek, Watchmen, and Wolverine), but it proved surprisingly entertaining.

When you break the film down, there isn’t any particular part that truly stands out. The plot isn’t anything original: America has been overrun by zombies, and four strangers on their separate ways to different locations rumored to be zombie-free are thrown together by circumstances and end up breaking one of the rules of surviving the zombie apocalypse: Don’t bond with anyone. The characters are a predictably one-dimensional (though well-played) bunch: A tough-as-nails zombie-killing machine (Woody Harrelson) who delights in toying with the undead before sending them to a gruesome end; a skittish, introverted college student (Jesse Eisenberg) who has stayed alive thanks in part to his lack of a life; a con artist bad girl (Emma Wood); and a gun-toting, wise-beyond-her-years 12-year-old (Abigail Breslin). The cliché romance between Eisenberg and Wood’s characters could be seen from a mile away. There’s an out-of-nowhere Bill Murray homage (about the funniest thing I’ve seen Murray in in years), and then there are your usual handful of plot holes, such as how they seemingly have no trouble finding fuel for their gas-guzzling Hummer (maybe it’s a hybrid), or where does the power to run a whole amusement park come from if no one is left to run the utilities.

Zombieland, however, is greater than the sum of its parts, mostly because it has one thing going for it: Lots and lots of hilarious zombie killing. The zombie slaying in this movie is kind of like the crack-laced seasoning in Bojangles’ chicken — an ingredient so powerfully good that it can turn any dish into a delicious treat. Really, the plot was just a haphazardly assembled device to string together disparate scenes of zombie annihilation, with reminders of various rules for survival sprinkled in.

The movie really doesn’t pretend or try to be more than what it is, and that’s part of the reason it worked. There’s no grand statements about life or humanity, no veiled metaphors, no forced B stories, no need for you to think; just lots and lots of zombies being dispatched in an entertaining fashion. The movie only runs 87 minutes, and really, that was about as long as it needed to be (although I could’ve definitely gone for a few more “Zombie Killer of the Week” scenes).

My rating: 3.8752343 out of 5

Start at the nine-minute mark of the first clip, when our all-important (and all-impotent) strip-mall critic enters and then continues being an obnoxious jerk through the entire second clip. Then again, it’s hard not to become corrupted when you hold such immense powers in your hands. Oh, and by the way, the guy who played God, I mean, Cooper — John Terrence — never appeared in anything after this (I guess after what must have been the role of a lifetime, nothing else could spur his interest).

I would warn you that this review probably contains some spoilers, but really, the new Star Trek movie was spoiled long before I started writing this review.

It was widely known that J.J. Abrams was brought in on the new Star Trek movie to breathe new life into the venerable franchise, which had sagged in recent years and went into hibernation after the forgettable spin-off series “Enterprise” failed to bring in many new fans while turning away a lot of the existing fan base.

Abrams certainly gave the franchise a fresh canvas from which to proceed, but in the process, the movie he created basically disavowed everything the franchise, with its ten movies and five TV shows, had created. In fact, the movie does more than disavow them; it basically says none of those things ever existed, so we are now free to do whatever we want.

If part of the filmmakers’ goal was to please Trek fans, as they’ve claimed, then they’ve failed miserably on that account. Anyone who has even just casually followed the Star Trek franchise would recognize this movie as running completely counter to many of core themes of Star Trek. As for the other (and primary) goal — attracting new fans to Star Trek, I doubt this movie did that. If you are someone who has not seen a second of Star Trek in your life, this movie would come off as just another run-of-the-mill sci-fi action flick filled with gorgeous CG effects, lots of explosions, and cliché dialogs. Not bad, but certainly nothing that won’t get overshadowed the minute the next summer blockbuster sci-fi film comes along with more and bigger explosions.

I can’t talk about my biggest complaint about the movie without giving away much of the ending. So click to read at your own discretion.

The characters

One of the reasons I had strong reservations about the movie was that the cast looked like “Star Trek: 90210″, but I can deal with a younger, sexier crew if they portrayed their characters faithfully. And yes, I realize that this is a prequel, so they won’t act 100 percent like their characters on the TV series or in the previous movies. However, all the main characters in this movie come off as so far removed from their old counterparts that it’s virtually impossible to see this crew of the Enterprise maturing into the people portrayed on the Original Series.

Chris Pine certainly displays the brashness one would expect in a young James T. Kirk, but the problem is that the brashness is basically the only thing his Kirk shows. Pine’s Kirk goes through the entire movie acting like an arrogant, pompous James Dean-wannabe, going out of his way to thump his nose at any hint of authority or the chain of command. It is hard to see this Kirk becoming the Kirk on the Original Series, who, while he would defy orders on occasions when he feels it’s necessary, still at his heart believes in the chain of command. And the movie gives you no hint that the young Kirk would start behaving more like the old Kirk. In fact, he’s rewarded for breaking every rule in the Starfleet book, which one can only assume would encourage him to keep doing so. The young Kirk takes his rebel-without-a-cause act so far that instead of pulling for him, you spend the whole movie wishing he would get shot by a Romulan phaser rifle, be eaten by the mutant Jurassic Park escapees he’s fleeing from, or just have his neck broken by Spock.

The other main characters also suffer from similar problems. In general, they all come off as smart-ass, loose-cannon college kids whose attitude would have no place in Starfleet Academy:

• Zachary Quinto’s young Spock spends most of the movie with an arrogant half-smile on his face and seems a lot more human than Vulcan, which is the exact opposite of what the Spock character is supposed to be. Yes, he’s younger and hasn’t acquired the discipline the older Spock displays, I get that. But really, can you see Spock, even in his younger days, making out with Uhura (yes, Uhura) in front of an audience in the transporter room? Or pounding Kirk’s face on the bridge because of a few insults?
• Speaking of Uhura (Zoe Saldana), her role in the movie seems to consist of acting like jailbait and engaging in that forced, where-did-that-come-from romance with Spock. Moreover, she comes off as the snobby brat who would bug her professors constantly to try to argue her way into a couple extra points on an assignment.
• Karl Urban actually does the best job of all the main cast in portraying his character — Leonard McCoy — in a way that makes it seem plausible that he would develop into the person Star Trek fans have come to know. Yet, even he suffers from a case of rebelliousness for no apparent reason other than that he’s younger.
• Chekov (Anton Yelchin) looks nothing like his older self and is basically a bundle of hyper-stimulated nerves with a mouth that tries to cram in as many words starting with V as possible. Hey, “nuclear wessels” was funny when you do it once or twice, but when you take that one shtick and make it all that the character is, it just becomes annoying.
• John Cho as Sulu comes close to his older counterpart on the Original Series in one unfortunate way: He got about two lines and a sword-fight scene, and the rest of the time he was just pushing buttons and counting out loud.

• As a sign of how bad the characterization is in this movie, they even made Scotty (Simon Pegg) annoying. Seriously, how the heck do you make Scotty annoying? And what the hell is the deal with that little weird, completely out-of-place alien sidekick of his (pictured)? Did you stumble onto the wrong set, Jar Jar?

Also, I didn’t like how conveniently every one of these characters gets placed in a post of power aboard the Enterprise when most of them start off being cadets. Most preposterous of all, of course, is the way Kirk goes from suspended cadet and stoleaway to captain in a day, in much the same way that Homer Simpson becomes a submarine captain in the episode where he joins the navy reserves, except with less humorous results.

Squeezing in homages and missing the point

The filmmakers seemed to think that preserving the essence of Star Trek meant running down a checklist of trademark lines and shticks. Mind meld, check. Have Bones say, “Dammit, I’m a doctor, not a …”, check. Have Chekov say a word starting with V, check, check, and check. Throw in some photon torpedos and transporter sequences. OK, now the old fans are happy, right?

WRONG! What Abrams and company didn’t seem to get is that a good Star Trek production doesn’t need a single Vulcan nerve pinch, a single “nuclear wessel”, or even a single photon torpedo. It’s all about the story, stupid, and this particular story betrays everything that is Star Trek. Star Trek has never been about those things, or big explosions and effects. Remember, this was a show that won a loyal following despite having fights between Kirk and a guy in a giant lizard costume and some of the cheesiest special effects you’ll find on TV in any era. To think that fans of the franchise would be appeased simply by seeing a few old trademark lines forced into a decidedly un-Trek-like production is patronizing.

Look, I’m not asking for the movie to mimic the Original Series in terms of the campiness, the hamminess, or the laughably bad effects and fight scenes. In fact, the Star Trek franchise hasn’t been about that ever since the 60s. What it has always been about is the vision of a Utopian future, where people have evolved a better nature. This movie doesn’t give any trace of those improved sensibilities. As one example, Spock doesn’t like Kirk challenging his authority, so he gives him a neck pinch and orders him thrown into an escape pod and marooned on a dangerous ice planet. Where the heck does that fit in with Starfleet’s enlightened principles? In fact, the characters in this movie are more like what humanity is now than what they are supposed to have become in the future of the Star Trek universe.

I know it’s not easy to concoct a good story that fits within the frame that the Star Trek franchise has laid down, as so much has already been done. However, in this case, it was as if the filmmakers didn’t even try. It seemed like they just said, “Oh, it’s hard to comply with the parameters of the Star Trek universe, so we are just going to obliterate that universe and do our own thing.” Hey, if it’s hard to set a story within the existing frame, then don’t do a prequel. Set it in the future. In fact, this story could have been set in a time following all the previous Star Trek shows and movies and would have worked better. As it is, it turned its back on everything that came before it and in essence delivered a big middle finger to all that Star Trek was and the fans who loved it.

You said it, Shatner.

In the end, this movie didn’t rejuvenate the Star Trek franchise. It merely created a new entity that co-opted the Star Trek name, and judging from the quality of this movie, these new voyages would have nowhere near the staying power of their predecessors. Before, I was hoping this movie might spawn a new TV series. Now, I’m just wishing we could create an alternate reality where this movie never existed.

My rating: A steamin’ pile of poop

The last couple blockbuster action flicks I’ve seen — “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” and “Watchmen” — have kind of been letdowns. Not that they were horrible, but I expected them to be much better than they were. That pattern continued this past weekend, though to a lesser degree, with “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”.

The Bad

The movie was filled with clichés, from the plot to the dialogues. Yes, comic book movies have always had some cliché elements in them, just because of the nature of the genre, but the latest X-Men movie lacked much of the nuances that made its three predecessors terrific films. You could literally tell which characters were going to be killed off within a minute or two of their entrance into the movie. The dialogues also get to groaner level on the cliché meter at times.

The other problem that plagued the film was some bad CG effects, which is kind of a strange problem for the fourth movie in a comic book film franchise to have. There were shots where Wolverine’s claws seemed ridiculously fake, looking almost like plastic attachments. Again, this seems an odd problem for the movie to have as his claws looked very realistic in the previous films. The claws seem to be somewhat larger and bulkier than they were in the first three films, and perhaps that added to the unrealistic appearance. We are also treated to a disturbingly creepy CG Patrick Stewart as Professor Xavier at one point. As one fellow moviegoer said on his way out the theater, they probably could’ve done better if they just took some shots of Patrick Stewart from his Jean-Luc Picard days and put it in the film.

The Good

The cliché-riddled plot and some poor CG effects notwithstanding, the movie does deliver pretty well on what people likely went to the theater for — Wolverine kicking butt. Hugh Jackman again does a terrific job in the character, which, because this is a prequel, is a bit less rough and ruthless as in the previous movies. The wry Wolverine sense of humor still comes through, as does his reckless abandon when pushed. The fight sequences lived up to expectations, with Wolverine slashing through jeeps, helicopters, cages, and just about everything in sight. The movie also introduces a host of new mutants, each of whom provides their own little action-sequence eye candy for the audience, and the movie climaxes with a pretty awesome fight on top of a nuclear cooling tower.

In the end, Jackman and the action scenes save the flick from its generic action-movie plot and cliché dialogues. If you are interested in this movie for the former two more than the latter two, then it’s still a film that you will get some enjoyment out of, but “Wolverine” comes up well short of its enormous potential.

So two of the movies I was looking forward to for this year — “Watchmen” and “Wolverine” — have fallen short of expectations. Next up: the Star Trek movie, which I’m already skeptical of after seeing the trailers. Here’s hoping I can avoid an 0-for-3.

Rating: 3 out of 5

With the new Star Trek movie coming out, Courtney and I were talking recently about how much we would like to see another (good) Star Trek series on TV to wash away the bad taste that “Enterprise” left in our mouths. Alas, one is probably not coming any time soon, if at all. But, in a moment of extreme Trekkieness, we came up with this idea: An all-Star Trek channel, with characters from all the series appearing in various shows. And since we were taking a three-hour drive to the beach, we spent the time in the car hashing out the details. I wish I could say we did it because it was a good creative-writing and design exercise, but let’s be honest here: We did it because we are giant Star Trek nerds; not quite to the degree of the “Trekkies” movies, but big Trek nerds nonetheless.

Anyway, here’s the weekly lineup we came up with. Click on each show for a description. See what they are watching in the 24th century. Enjoy.

A few of my favorites:

Review and spoilers after the jump …

I had never heard of the Watchmen until I began seeing trailers for the movie last year. My curiosity piqued, I read the graphic novel and was blown away by the characters, the manyfold plot, the symbolism, and the unique and varying way in which  the book tells the story. And of course, the artwork was amazing. As I read the book, I thought, “There’s no way a movie based on this book would look bad.” After all, the panels were incredibly cinematic.

Now that I’ve seen the movie, I can report for certain that the production does look fantastic and faifthful to way things look in the book. The other aspects of what made the book great, however, are reproduced with less success.

The Characters

Jeffrey Dean Morgan was spot-on as the Comedian. Some of the other actors, not so much.

The movie does a pretty good job of presenting a couple of the characters. In fact, Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the sadistic Edward Blake (the Comedian) might be the highlight of the movie. Jackie Earle Haley and Patrick Wilson also do credible jobs bringing to life Rorschach and Nite Owl II. However, some of the other major players fall short in the translation from the comic book pages to the silver screen. Ozymandias (played by Matthew Goode), for instance, was nowhere near the visionary, plotting magalomaniac that he was in the book. And while Malin Akerman fits into the outfit of Silk Spectre II well enough, she delivers her lines in a stiff, unconvincing manner. Billy Crudup, in the role of a heavily CGI-fied Dr. Manhattan, didn’t have the kind of voice that really effectively portrayed the charcter’s growingly detached psyche. Part of the problem with the characters stems from the dialog. While the lines may read fine on the pages of a comic book, they come off sounding very staged and awkward when spoken on-screen.

The Ending

Despite some issues with some of the characters, I was fine with the movie until the last half hour. Yes, they did change the ending: Instead of blowing up a giant space squid in New York City and tricking Earth into thinking it is under attack from aliens, Ozymandias instead sets off explosions in several large cities around the world using the powers of Dr. Manhattan, thus making the world think it was under attack by Dr. Manhattan. While the change still gets the same practical result of uniting the world against a common foe, the fact that that common foe is now Dr. Manhattan changes (and lessens) the meaning in his leaving the Earth for another galaxy at the end. To me, when he chose to leave for another galaxy at the end of the book, it was a sign of his having lost his newly regained faith and compassion for humanity. In the movie’s ending, it’s not really like he had a choice to not leave the Earth. After all, do we really think Manhattan’s fragile psyche could withstand living in a world where the world has declared war on him? While we can draw other symbolism and meaning from the movie’s ending, I personally preferred the book’s finish. I’m not saying the movie had to do a giant space squid (and it would’ve probably been cheesy and difficult to explain), but I thought it was a mistake to make Dr. Manhattan Earth’s common enemy.

The other thing I did not like about the ending was that it implied Nite Owl and Silk Spectre were going back to crimefighting. That may make for a nice, schmaltzy Hollywood ending, but it doesn’t fit with the story development that came before, when Ozymandias said, plainly, that the new world requires less obvious acts of heroism. The crime-fighting superhero is supposed to have been rendered obsolete by the new world order, and Rorschach, the only masked hero who was still fighting crime, is dead, so why are Nite Owl and Silk Spectre picking up the craft again?

The Back Story

One of the questions on my mind heading into the movie was how it would handle all the back story in the book that helped weave such an intricate backdrop for the plot. In this regard, I thought the movie did a fairly good job summarizing where necessary and eliminating parts without doing any significant damage. The opening credit sequence, set to the tune of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They’re A-changin’ ” served up an effective yet succinct summary of the rise and decline of the Minutemen. The entire pirate story subplot, as expected, was not included in the movie, which is quite understandable as there is simply no way to do that without making the movie twice as long and thoroughly confusing viewers who have not read the book. While the subplot does add symbolism in the book, its absence did not hurt the movie.

The Production

As I commented above, the movie looks terrific. There were many shots that duplicated their counterparts from the comic book, and the overall feel of the movie remained true to the book, replicating the alternate 1980s world. The gadgets and costumes all look pretty much like they are supposed to, and the Owl ship was a treat to behold.

One complaint I had was poor editing in some instances that hurt the storytelling. For instance, the sequence concerning Dr. Manhattan’s origins was cut in such a way that you would think he was seen reassembling himself even while they were holding his funeral. We also never see Rorschach sending off his journal, nor do we hear the final entry, so when we see it in the stack of mail at the newspaper office at the end, we don’t really know what significance that holds if we hadn’t read the book.

All in All

I would say this movie gets a 2.5 or 3 out of 5. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t as good as it could’ve or probably should’ve been. The ironic thing is that I thought it successfully cleared its biggest hurdle — condensing the vast story of the book into a two-and-a-half-hour movie — only to stumble on some lesser ones that were much easier to deal with, such as poor acting, spotty editing, and a changed ending that had less impact and meaning.

Not being much of a comic book reader, I must admit that I hadn’t heard of the Watchmen until I first saw the movie trailer last year. Intrigued, I read the book (prying it out of Courtney’s hands after she was done with it) and instantly became hooked. The movie trailers so far look pretty good. We were walking around in Barnes & Noble the other day and saw a bunch of books related to the movie, including one that had a bunch of production pictures. I have no doubt the production value is going to be amazing, and of course they have a great story to work from. My only concern is whether they’ll be able to condense the book into 2 hours and 43 minutes.

A few other movies I’m planning to see this year, and not necessarily because I think they’ll be good:

Star Trek (May 8 )

Truth be told, I’m fairly certain this movie is going to suck and piss off a bunch of diehard Star Trek fans. The trailers I’ve seen so far make it look like another explosion-filled, sexed-up action flick instead of something along the veins of what Star Trek has stood for. And the characters all look like models. Still, if it has a Star Trek name attached to it, I’ll feel compelled to go see it. But I wish they would’ve dumped their budget into something more like this instead.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (May 1)

I haven’t really seen or read too much about this movie except for the fact that it’s coming out. But I loved all three X-Men movies and thought Hugh Jackman was terrific, so this is a must. I really hope they’ll be able to make another X-Men movie with the whole cast (especially Patrick Stewart), but for now, this will do.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (June 24)

I absolutely HATED the first Transformers movie. The characters from the 1980s cartoon show had more personality than the giant CG robots in the movie. I don’t even think they wrote a script for the movie. They probably just made a bunch of CG sequences and then came up with something to tie them together.

So why the heck is the sequel on my list of movies to see? Because I’m a nostalgic sucker for the transformers. I don’t know if I’m a big enough sucker to pay to see this in a theater though. It’s looking like a Netflix candidate.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (July 17)

This is here because I know Courtney will insist on seeing it and I’ll tag along to see 20-year-olds playing characters who are 12. That and Alan Rickman.

Overall, the fashions were disappointing. There were a couple of stunning gowns, but for the most part, everyone played it safe with nice-but-uninspiring dresses in red or neutrals. Glitter was also big, with celebrities like Tina Fey and Viola Davis decked out in head-to-toe gold and silver. But the combination of the moment, apparently, is black over dark blue: Kate Winslet, Reese Witherspoon, Queen Latifah, and Marion Cotiliard (of La Vie en Rose) all sported it.

In terms of structure, elaborate draping (Evan Rachel Wood, Natalie Portman, Amy Adams) was hot, as were deconstructed looks like Nicole Kidman’s feathery neckline , Taraji Henson’s uneven layers, and Marion Cotillard’s shaggy tulle. A more distressing trend was the return of the mermaid gown, a style that can make even a healthy woman like Beyonce look broad in the beam. Mermaid gowns don’t work well for awards shows for another reason: most often, you’re shown from the waist up, causing viewers to miss an important element of your gown.

Best of the bunch:

Anne Hathaway

Anne Hathaway

Much as I dislike her as an actress, I have to admit the woman has smashing taste in gowns. Here, she manages to look both ethereal and glamorous. The dress sparkles, but the white shade keeps it from overwhelming with glitz. This is Oscar glamour at its best.

Ryoko Hirosue

I love everything about this “Departures” actress’s look, from the way the folds ripple across her bodice like flowing water, to her exquisite diamond collar, to her subdued makeup.

Taraji Henson

Though they appear a bit mummyish in a still photo, on screen these layers added oomph and heft to Henson’s gown. Their contrasting cuts brought texture to what might have been just another boring ecru gown. The only misstep here is the necklace: it’s pretty, but clashes with the deconstructed look of the dress.

Meryl Streep

Just contrast this image with Streep clowning around in overalls in Mamma Mia to get an idea of her range. The eminence grise (did anyone not name-check her last night?) takes command in a gown fit for a prima donna: the drapey neckline says Renaissance, while the gunmetal gray is straight off the runways. Both accentuate her shapely, peach-toned shoulders.

. . . And the worst

Miley Cyrus

Was she inspired by a Christmas tree? I can’t think of any other explanation for the odd, overlapping tiers of her skirt. But it’s the twee little bow on the belt that annoys me the most.

Amanda Seyfried

The spaghetti straps, foldover on the neckline, and big honkin’ bow make this resemble a bad bridesmaid’s dress circa 1995. The tomato red color overpowers Seyfried’s delicate beauty, too–she’d be much better off in a pale blue or green.

Jessica Biel

In this ensemble, Biel looks as though she took a shower, wrapped a towel around herself, and then forgot to change into her gown.

Beyonce

The flowers on your dress should never be larger than your head.

Heidi Klum

You know it’s a bad dress when even a supermodel can’t make it look good. This looks as though she ran out of the studio while the fashion students were still trying to pin the fabric on her.

As one of my friends said, it’s like “Stardate 90210″ — a bunch of models barely out of puberty flying around in the Enterprise. The trailer makes the movie look like something along the lines of the Transformers movie — lots of explosions and sex, not so much plot. If you are into that kind of movie, fine. But that’s not Star Trek. I can appreciate trying to reach out to audiences outside the hardcore Trekkies base, but from what I’ve read and seen, this movie is starting to look like it’s swerving so far away from the essence of Star Trek that it’ll alienate that base of loyal fans. Here’s hoping I’m wrong.

Entertainment Weekly has an in-depth look at the making of the new Star Trek movie, which is coming out next May. It’s a pretty nice read, though it doesn’t alleviate the ambivalence I have about the movie. I have no doubt that it can be a good movie, but I’m less certain whether it’ll be a good Star Trek movie, especially when Abrams said in the EW piece that he’s always been more of a Star Wars guy. If this Trek movie is going to be more like Star Wars, it had better be more like the first three Star Wars movies than the last three. The EW piece says Abrams’ goal is to make Star Trek more “pop”. Here’s hoping that doesn’t mean it becomes a mindless menagerie of special effects with an occasional classic Trek catchphrase thrown in.

One minor bone to pick with the EW article. At one point, it says:

But since the box office peak of the original film series in 1986 (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home), the Trek brand has devolved into a near-irrelevant cultural joke, likely to inspire giggles and unprintable curses from even its most ardent supporters. After a succession of contrived TV spin-offs (the last, UPN’s Star Trek: Enterprise, mustered only a feeble 2 million viewers in its final season) and mediocre features based on the best of the bunch (Star Trek: The Next Generation), even people who’d built their entire careers around Trek could see the writing on the wall. ”Star Trek,” says Leonard Nimoy, ”had run its course.”

In my opinion, the Trek franchise didn’t peak until well after Star Trek IV. And those “contrived” TV spin-offs were anything but (well, ok, there was “Star Trek: Enterprise”). Without that series of spin-offs, Trek would’ve remained a short-lived, cheesy sci-fi show from the 60s that somehow drew enough of a cult following to warrant a series of movies. But thanks to the subsequent TV series, it became a full-fledged cultural phenomenon. Trekkies can debate till they are blue in the face about which is better, The Original Series or The Next Generation, but no one can deny that without TNG, the franchise would have never reached the height it did from the late 80s to the late-90s. My favorite series was Deep Space 9, which, after a slow start the first two or three seasons, offered some of the best stuff I’ve ever seen, not just in the Star Trek sphere, not just in sci-fi shows, but in all of television at that time. I would put the last four seasons of DS9 up against just about anything on TV. In some ways, it also broke away from a lot of the Trek mythos like Abrams is trying to do with the new movie. It set the the show in a new environment (a space station instead of a ship), introduced new faces, broke new boundaries in the kind of stories that a Trek show can do, and even got away from the idea that every storyline should be nicely wrapped up in one or (occasionally) two episodes. Yet it still held on to the right things that still made it quintessential Trek. That’s my hope for the new movie.