Quick reviews - Star Trek and Angel & Demons
* Spoilers follow. Proceed with caution
Star Trek
I've never been a trekkie. But I do recall glimpses of a few grainy episodes on the telly from years past, watching William Shatner as James T Kirk doing battle with a hideous monster in an unknown grey planet. Thinking back now, all I can reflect upon is the cheesy production values, Kirk's Yellow and Black tight space suit, Spock's weird eyebrows, space travel and the big-ass chair upon which Kirk often reclined whilst barking commands to avoid a missile directed at the star ship enterprise.
Flash forward to 2009 and J.J. Abrams new Star Trek retains most of the above elements but the visual effects and production values are far far better.
But this movie only serves as a first step towards Hollywood's need to re-build on a lost and broken franchise. I'm confident Abrams and his team have already begun working towards putting together the story-board for the second installment of the new Star Trek.
Abrams' story allows, for those relatively un-familiar with Star Trek, to find comfort with the motley crew of characters and universe within which it exists. It provides the back stories of Kirk and Spock and sets up a story which primarily serves to have all the recurring characters of Star Trek franchise meet and continue towards the many adventures which lay ahead.
Besides this basic goal of setting up the premise, the story offers no special plot. It plays around with the concept of time travel, time wraps, black hole, space beam etc most of which only make sense when taken with a grain of salt. In fact there was the one sequence of time travel (or whatever it was called) where the Spock of the future goes through a black hole ( atleast I think it was a black hole) and is some how mysteriously is captured by the villain Nero. That whole sequence left me quite confused, but I let it pass since it really does not in anyway interrupt the story arc. Through out the movie I was bothered by how the story sort of rubbished many scientific principles. For instance, for my own knowledge - Can there be an explosion in space? I mean with the lack of Oxygen and all. Maybe I'm just ignorant. Too many holes in this space opera. But its alright as long as it serves up the entertainment.
Eric Bana plays the villain Nero and plays it relatively straight thankfully, without too much scenery chewing. Bana is one of my favorite actors and he hasn't done much lately. Although I heard he helmed a documentary which was showed in the recently concluded Tribecca Film Festival - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1284028/
Angels & Demons
I'd given my 2 cents about this movie in an another blog, so I shan't go into great detail again. Its difficult to adapt a Dan Brown novel. His novels usually have multiple story lines and he masterly narrates these parallel story arcs, providing gripping action and lots of factual/semi-fictional details. True Page-turners. But Ron Howard somehow translates page-turners as the need to move things quickly! And so the necessary impact (tension) is lost.
The crux of the book, the conflict between Illuminati and the Vatican Church, plays a pivotal role, since the readers are led to believe, that the Illuminati has challenged the Church and Langdon (indirectly) to solve the clues to get to the ticking Anti-Matter time bomb and hopefully save the church in time. So when the twist arrives the readers are given quite a pleasant surprise. Somehow the movie misses this point and only gives a passing reference to the Illuminati and as a result we just don't get why Langdon chases down these clues with such vigour. I mean after all any reasonable chief of security would question the tenous involvement of the illuminati.
Anyhow most of the action is hurried. A sort of forced urgency on proceedings. Langdon must have a very sharp eye, cos he does not miss a single clue or fact or key information, without which he might as well been running in circles. The lead actress really has not purpose in the movie except running along with Langdon and providing as an outlet for Langdon to bombard her with meaningless historical lessons. Pray why does she have the secret journals of the murdered scientist flown to the Vatican? It serves no real purpose. And how could Stellan Skarsgard not know the Pope was poisoned? Didn't he mention he had installed secret cameras to watch the Pope? And you would think a high powered laboratory which produces a potentially extremely dangerous Anti-Matter would have some type of additional security? The audience aren't left to ponder on these points since Ron Howard ties loose ends quickly and dashes to the unsatisfying climax.
Another sub-par effort by Ron Howard and Tom Hanks. They haven't learned from the mistakes of Da Vinci Code.
Nav
Star Trek
I've never been a trekkie. But I do recall glimpses of a few grainy episodes on the telly from years past, watching William Shatner as James T Kirk doing battle with a hideous monster in an unknown grey planet. Thinking back now, all I can reflect upon is the cheesy production values, Kirk's Yellow and Black tight space suit, Spock's weird eyebrows, space travel and the big-ass chair upon which Kirk often reclined whilst barking commands to avoid a missile directed at the star ship enterprise.
Flash forward to 2009 and J.J. Abrams new Star Trek retains most of the above elements but the visual effects and production values are far far better.
But this movie only serves as a first step towards Hollywood's need to re-build on a lost and broken franchise. I'm confident Abrams and his team have already begun working towards putting together the story-board for the second installment of the new Star Trek.
Abrams' story allows, for those relatively un-familiar with Star Trek, to find comfort with the motley crew of characters and universe within which it exists. It provides the back stories of Kirk and Spock and sets up a story which primarily serves to have all the recurring characters of Star Trek franchise meet and continue towards the many adventures which lay ahead.
Besides this basic goal of setting up the premise, the story offers no special plot. It plays around with the concept of time travel, time wraps, black hole, space beam etc most of which only make sense when taken with a grain of salt. In fact there was the one sequence of time travel (or whatever it was called) where the Spock of the future goes through a black hole ( atleast I think it was a black hole) and is some how mysteriously is captured by the villain Nero. That whole sequence left me quite confused, but I let it pass since it really does not in anyway interrupt the story arc. Through out the movie I was bothered by how the story sort of rubbished many scientific principles. For instance, for my own knowledge - Can there be an explosion in space? I mean with the lack of Oxygen and all. Maybe I'm just ignorant. Too many holes in this space opera. But its alright as long as it serves up the entertainment.
Eric Bana plays the villain Nero and plays it relatively straight thankfully, without too much scenery chewing. Bana is one of my favorite actors and he hasn't done much lately. Although I heard he helmed a documentary which was showed in the recently concluded Tribecca Film Festival - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1284028/
Angels & Demons
I'd given my 2 cents about this movie in an another blog, so I shan't go into great detail again. Its difficult to adapt a Dan Brown novel. His novels usually have multiple story lines and he masterly narrates these parallel story arcs, providing gripping action and lots of factual/semi-fictional details. True Page-turners. But Ron Howard somehow translates page-turners as the need to move things quickly! And so the necessary impact (tension) is lost.
The crux of the book, the conflict between Illuminati and the Vatican Church, plays a pivotal role, since the readers are led to believe, that the Illuminati has challenged the Church and Langdon (indirectly) to solve the clues to get to the ticking Anti-Matter time bomb and hopefully save the church in time. So when the twist arrives the readers are given quite a pleasant surprise. Somehow the movie misses this point and only gives a passing reference to the Illuminati and as a result we just don't get why Langdon chases down these clues with such vigour. I mean after all any reasonable chief of security would question the tenous involvement of the illuminati.
Anyhow most of the action is hurried. A sort of forced urgency on proceedings. Langdon must have a very sharp eye, cos he does not miss a single clue or fact or key information, without which he might as well been running in circles. The lead actress really has not purpose in the movie except running along with Langdon and providing as an outlet for Langdon to bombard her with meaningless historical lessons. Pray why does she have the secret journals of the murdered scientist flown to the Vatican? It serves no real purpose. And how could Stellan Skarsgard not know the Pope was poisoned? Didn't he mention he had installed secret cameras to watch the Pope? And you would think a high powered laboratory which produces a potentially extremely dangerous Anti-Matter would have some type of additional security? The audience aren't left to ponder on these points since Ron Howard ties loose ends quickly and dashes to the unsatisfying climax.
Another sub-par effort by Ron Howard and Tom Hanks. They haven't learned from the mistakes of Da Vinci Code.
Nav
Labels: Movie Reviews, Movies
posted by Nav at 4:32 PM
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