Star Trek (2009) Movie Review

 The new Star Trek movie is the latest in a series of disappointing and lackluster remakes, designed to make money more than to appeal to fans or create something out of a genuine desire for artistic creation.

*SPOILER ALERT*








The film did have some positives. The casting for many of the characters was nearly perfect, so much so that at certain moments one could close their eyes and imagine the original cast members at a younger age. The dialog was overall fairly well-written, and there were some fairly amusing moments as well. I enjoyed Leonard Nimoy's cameo, not only because it linked this film to the previous, but also because it linked the Star Trek of this film to the previous Star Treks, since this film took place in an alternate universe (something not at all without precedent in Trek canon).
  The filmmakers must have been burdened with the task of keeping everything as close to the original series designs as possible without making it seem horrendously dated and out-of-touch, and I think they pulled this off very well. The designs of the ships (including the Enterprise and the Romulan ship) were very interesting, and the enemy had a clear and believable motive. Even the Romulans themselves looked cooler. They were different from traditional Romulans, but neither did the Borg of First Contact look like those of the tv series, and the Klingons changed drastically from the original series to The Next Generation.

However, there were some major problems with this film, and few of them are of the type with which Trek canon nerds would be concerned. The action scenes were intensely shaky and erratic, to the point that Michael Bay had a wet dream about them. This, combined with the lens flares/iBridge vs. blackness of space dichotomy, gave me a headache and hurt my eyes. While most of the characters were interesting enough, Uhura was very boring and two-dimensional, and her romantic sideplot with Spock made absolutely no sense whatsoever, and why did Sulu have a katana, other than that he is an Asian? The product placement also irked me, far moreso than most films, because it destroyed the illusion of being in the Star Trek universe. Let me explain.

One of Gene Roddenberry's main ideas in creating Star Trek was that the future be an optimistic one. One of the most important ideas about the crew of the Enterprise was that it was made from people of all ethnicities on Earth, working together. Americans, Russians, Asians, Africans, and even aliens all worked together in harmony for the betterment of living beings in the Universe, not just for petty personal or nationalistic gains. In an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, Captain Janeway tells an alien that she has difficulty conceiving of money because her society abolished it, and Kirk in Star Trek III didn't know how much a hundred dollars was. In a  universe where corporations that need to advertise themselves exist, it naturally means that the future is still a place where people work against each other for personal gain, which seems to be fundamentally incompatible with Roddenberry's vision. I know, I'm getting pretty nitpicky here, but this is something that completely ruined the film for me. Besides, why the hell would they have car phones in a world where they have handheld communicators?

I also found the plot to be very unrealistic at times. I'm not sure in what military outfit a suspended cadet who stows away on a ship and causes a mutiny  would be promoted to captain of the flagship of the fleet. I don't care if he did save the day and get to punch some aliens a lot. Also, is it the practice of the Federation to stuff their own people into escape pods when there is a perfectly good brig available? Things like this separate many bad movies from the good ones. At first glance it might be missed, but I just can't take it seriously because of this. It's sloppy.

Overall, most of the really important elements were well done (casting, writing), but the special effects for the most part were overkill and the movie felt less like Star Trek than it did an average action movie. There were long periods of time where I forgot that I was watching Star Trek. The sequel would benefit from a new director I think, one who actually likes Trek. J.J Abrams is quoted as saying that he doesn't like Star Trek but understands why people would like it, which to me says "hey I think this is stupid, but I like money so let's make it! There are definitely worse movies out there, but none of them are Star Trek movies. This is a low point for the franchise.

Optimism and Pessimism are both dangerous

Many people like to consider themselves optimists, or pessimists. They see the glass as either half-full or half-empty, and can't see the other side. Personally, I think both are stupid. Life is neither completely fantastic, nor completely shit, and to think that it is either is to see the world through an unrealistic skew that distorts reality. Both of these ideologies are dangerous.

Excessive optimism forces one to live with their head in the clouds, with no real understanding of what's going on in the world. There are a lot of problems that have to be dealt with, and despite what some people might have you believe, ignoring problems and pretending that they aren't there (ever seen "The Secret"?) WILL NOT make them go away. Ask my parents. They ignored their problems and because of it their marriage fell apart.

Now, that said, there is still a lot of beauty in the world. From wonderful things like love and good friends to the simplest of things like appreciating the changing colours of leaves on a tree in fall, or a beautiful fresh snowfall, or the way that a cloud can look like a puppy. Excessive pessimism blinds you to these things, and makes you believe that everything is shit. This is just as false as the previous point.

Every event has a positive and negative aspect to it, no matter how much one seems to outweigh the other. For example, if not for the second world war, many of the technological advances of the fifties would not have come about, including microwaves. Does that mean that the holocaust was a good thing? Of course not. It did, however, lead to some positive things. Most situations are not so extreme, however, and the advantages/disadvantages are not always so clear. It is important to recognize the positive aspects of a negative situation, and vice versa, but it is also okay to think that a situation really sucks, or is really good, because sometimes they are.

I, for example, am not an optimistic person. I am, however, positive. I do my best to see the good in everything, but it isn't always easy. I feel negatively about things sometimes, but in general I like to think that many things that happen are good things.

In conclusion, positivity and negativity are great. It helps to rationally see a situation, and recognize the nagativity of it while appreciating the positivity. Optimism/pessimism is for people with unrealistic world-views, and can lead to personal catastrophe.

The X Files: Fight the Future review

Over the last few months, my girlfriend and I have been watching The X Files, and we've really been enjoying it. I enjoy that it frames its science fiction in a fairly believable world, which is sorely lacking in the genre. The first movie, “Fight the Future” takes place between seasons five and six, and having just completed season five, we decided to watch the movie. My expectations were fairly high, but I was let down incredibly, for many reasons. The film had many flaws, but most of them can fall under the following two categories.

*SPOILER ALERT*

1: Too much serendipity

There were far too many moments where things just happened to work out in the film. At the beginning, there was a bomb threat in a building. Mulder plays a “hunch” that the bomb is actually planted in the building across the street. Then, he just happens to want a drink, and just happens to go to the one vending machine in which the bomb was set (there were several in the room, and the building was very large). Then Mulder just happens to know that “something is wrong,” just before the building blows up. Later on, Mulder finds out about tanker trucks from these kids, which he assumes are carrying an alien virus. They are pointed in the direction of the trucks, but come to a fork in the road. Deciding to go neither left nor right, they go straight, off into some desert. Then they stop at a set of train tracks, which happens to be at just the right moment for a train to go by, with tanker truck trailers on it! They follow the train to some secret government base, and enter some big inflatable dome things that are full of bees. They run out, and incredibly, are not stung at all. A bee stays in Scully's jacket, however, and after she runs through a corn field, drives to the Dallas airport, boards a plane, flies back to Washington and goes back to the FBI office, it stings her. Mulder calls 911, and a spoof ambulance shows up to take Scully (they just happened to be ready for the call). Mulder asks what hospital they are being taken to, and the driver shoots Mulder in the face. The real ambulance comes momentarily after, and takes him to the hospital, where the Lone Gunmen guys and Skinner wake him up. Mulder finds out that Scully is on an alien ship in Antarctica, and just happens to walk over a hole that collapses and allows him to fall right into the alien ship. The thing is gigantic, as we are shown in the next shot. Mulder then falls down a slide thing, and just happens to end up right beside Scully who is in some pod thing. Then the two escape the ship and it flies away.

The odds of all this happening are insane. There is no detective work here, no investigation, and no actual thought on the part of the main characters. They just keep falling into situations perfectly. If not for pure and total luck, our heroes would have failed miserably and evil triumphs, etc.

2: Logic goes out the window

Right at the beginning, a kid falls through some dirt into a hole and gets infected with the virus. This is just outside of a town, where numerous people have almost certainly walked before. The kid was maybe ten or twelve, which means an adult would definitely make it collapse. This in itself is bizarre enough, but given the fact that the ground is so unstable, why would the government agents who showed up to deal with the situation drive their trucks right up to the ground that is so unstable that a 90 pound kid makes it collapse? Why didn't it collapse?

Also, when Mulder goes to rescue Scully in Antarctica, he takes some ice tractor vehicle, and it runs out of gas. The only people in Antarctica are scientists, and I think that between them they could have figured out that the vehicle needed more gas in order to get to the very specific coordinates that Mulder had been given. When it does break down, Mulder decides to walk the rest of the way, with no hat, no gloves, no scarf and no face protection. Mulder would have succumbed to hypothermia within minutes. When he rescues Scully she is in some pod and covered in some goo stuff. Mulder happens to have an extra one-piece parka and boots for her (which seemed to appear out of nowhere), and they left the alien ship as it took off. It doesn't explain how they survived after this though, since they are still stranded in Antarctica without the things they need to survive, and without any fuel for their tractor thing, and Scully is wet from the goo.

And why did the Well Manicured Man blow himself up? There was no motivation for him to do this.

3: TOO MANY ALIENS

The series has barely shown any aliens or ships at all up close, and up until this point, even though it seemed pretty convincing that the aliens existed, doubt was placed into the minds of both Mulder and the viewer that they existed, and that the conspiracy was from the government and nothing else. The “aliens” that we had seen thus far could have been genetic anomalies or people with a bizarre disease (as has been implied), but now there is no doubt as to whether or not the aliens are real. They crammed as many as they could into every possible scene in the hopes of creating a scary sci-fi horror like a Ridley Scott film, but it falls short of this in so many ways. The reason that Alien was so effective was because we almost never saw the alien. X Files shot their alien in the same way Ridley Scott did, but it was far too much. We had already been explicitly shown that the aliens were real multiple times, and by the end of the film, showing the ship was unnecessary and gratuitous. It didn't add anything to the film.

This film is memorable only for the incredible sloppiness and lack of interest with which they employed while creating it. With such an interesting, memorable series, and most of the same cast and crew working on it, it could have been so much better. Deep Throat and X must be spinning in their graves.

Michael Ignatieff: A republican in liberal clothing.

For those Canadians who happen to read this, we know that the majority of the country is fed up with Harper. I am too. Harper is ruining Canada, something of which we are all aware. The knee-jerk reaction is to hope for an election soon, which may oust him once and for all. 

Look at the alternative though. The Liberals have done nothing to oppose Harper's tar sands agenda, are in favour of extending the Afghanistan mission past 2011 where it has been clear for years we are doing no good, killed the coalition government plan which would have created Canada's first majority government in years and finally removed Harper from power, the opposition to Canada's role as a peacekeeper, and their attitude toward civil liberties.

Michael Ignatieff, the Canadian-born leader of the Liberal Party who has spent most of his life outside of Canada, has a track record even more frightening than Harper. He has been quoted as saying "The [Afghans] understand the difficult truth that their best hope of freedom lies in a temporary experience of imperial rule,"* and he believes American imperialism is "the last hope for democracy and stability alike." He has outlined his belief that torture is not only worth condoning, but necessary:  "Defeating terror requires violence… indefinite detention of subjects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, even pre-emptive war."

Michael Ignatieff is a republican masquerading as a liberal. While Harper has been an awful leader thus far, we at least know his style. Better the devil you know. Michael Ignatieff is not to be trusted any more than Stephen Harper, and until the Liberal Party wakes up and sends him back to America where he and his political kind belong, the Liberal Party is not a viable political alternative. He is helping to push Canada more toward an American style political system, where the two major parties stand for essentially the same thing, with few significant differences. Ignatieff claims to oppose Harper, but the two are more alike than we think. 

*source: http://www.newint.org/columns/worldbeaters/2005/12/01/michael-ignatieff/

The word "Revolution" is overused.

Has anyone else gotten sick of this word? It's almost as overused as epic.

There is an unlimited supply of these pictures. When a word is used so incredibly often, it begins to lose all meaning. This is what has happened with revolution. Companies constantly use it to make their brand sound more important than it is. Like the Shake Weight.

Of course, this is another meaningless, forgettable workout product that no one will care about in a few months. The advertisers know this too, so in order to sell as many of the stupid things as they can before its product life is up, they hype it up like crazy, as we can tell by this stupid video. And what word to they use? The old standby for crappy products. Revolution. 

The word revolution should apply to:

1: the overthrowing of a government, or the process of such
2: the process of an object spinning on its axis.

That's it. There is no such thing as a REVOLUTIONARY new way to prepare mashed potatoes.

Why racist, sexist and homophobic jokes aren't funny.

A lot of people use racist, sexist or homophobic jokes around me often, and they aren't funny. I'm going to explain why, with two very good reasons.

NOTE: I will be using the phrase “offensive” to refer to racist, sexist and homophobic jokes. I do not mean to refer to all jokes or types of comedy that could be considered offensive, such as sexual humour or insult comics. I simply don't want to have to type out “racist, sexist or homophobic jokes” each time.

1: They reinforce negative stereotypes.

This one should be a no-brainer. Even if you aren't racist or sexist yourself, you create and reinforce these attitudes within yourself. You cannot claim to not be a racist while telling nigger jokes, because every time you see a black person you will be reminded of the racial stereotype that you so often spout within your jokes. No one says offensive jokes while trying deliberately to be malicious (well, most don't), but the malicious element comes out not in others' feelings and actions, but in your own. If your exposure to black people is mostly through offensive jokes (which is even more likely if you live in a city like I do, which is 90% white), you will stereotype most black people as the dumb nigger stereotype. You become the racist. While most people would agree that racism and sexism is a problem in modern society, jokes like these work to roll back decades of hard work and progress that has been made in civil rights and equality.

2: It's old, tired, worn out, and just not funny.

Remember when Borat came out? Remember how every single person started saying “it's very nice” in the Borat accent almost all the time? How about Dave Chapelle's “I'm Rick James, Bitch,” or the “WHAAZZAAAAAP” guys? Remember how irritating and unfunny those things got after a while? Yeah. Now think of the fact that racist and sexist jokes have been around in their present form for at least a hundred years. Imagine if people said I'M RICK JAMES BITCH for a hundred years. Not very funny anymore, is it? The same thing has happened with offensive jokes. Only people who are completely and utterly devoid of wit, humour and intelligence use jokes like these as a crutch. Those who are actually intelligent and interesting find something that appeals to all people.  

Black Sabbath and Glue: A Cautionary Tale

So I read online that a good way to clean records is by using wood glue. You coat the record in it, and then when it dries you simply peel it off. In theory, the glue gets right into the grooves, and when you peel it off, it takes any dirt with it. Made sense to me, so I gave it a try.

In a momentary lapse of reason, I decided to use it on a record I had that was dirty but enjoyable, namely Black Sabbath Volume 4. In retrospect, I should have tested it on a Barry Manilow record or some other shitshingle, but alas, live and learn. I applied the glue, let it dry, and came back some time later. I discovered that I had a great deal of trouble trying to peel off the layer, for whatever reason. Perhaps there is a difference between wood glue and "carpenter's glue," which is what I used, or perhaps I didn't put a thick enough layer on (which I later read about). Whatever the case, it was difficult to remove, so I decided to wash it off with water.

BIG. MISTAKE.

The water removed most of the surface glue, but the stuff that was deep in the grooves was deeply entrenched and wouldn't go anywhere. I let it sit for a while, but no dice, and since I didn't want the label to be destroyed I took it out and shelved it for a while.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks later, when I was thinking about how to clean it up, and realized that if I put something on the label, some sort of clear glue, it might protect it. It won't look the best, but a dirty label is better than no label at all. I looked around for what to use, and found a bottle of rubber cement and some silicone aquarium sealant. Since I know the rubber cement dries clear and the silicone translucent, I went with the cement. I applied it to the label, and could still read it, which was a good sign. I then proceeded to soak the record in dish soap and warm water (not hot, that could warp the record). When I came back a while later, I found that it helped, but there was still some glue residue on the record. I then discovered that vinegar is good at breaking the seal of wood glue, and gave it a shot, soaking the record in vinegar, then scrubbing the hell out of it. Then I went to bed, leaving the record to dry.

I then came back to the record the next morning, and the vinegar seemed to do the trick. Most, though not all, of the glue disappeared. I'm not sure if what's left will ever go away, but I'm out of vinegar now so I decided to give it a rest. Much to my surprise though, the rubber cement peeled away from the label leaving no trace that it had ever been there.

The moral of the story is simply that if you want to try a new technique, always try it on something that doesn't matter if you can. Also, rubber cement works great in protecting record labels (that would be the label on the record, not the label distributing the record), but make sure the label is covered completely, and overlap it onto the vinyl itself and inside the hole in the middle to make sure no water gets underneath it.