Any chance to get aboard the Enterprise
Since my friend Celia has never seen Wrath of Khan, and we were looking to relax after a couple hours of Super Mario Galaxy and Iron Chef America: Supreme Cuisine, I retrieved the DVD and we loaded it up.
Odd, showing this movie to someone who had almost no context at all for it. We explained that Kirk was an intergalactic hero once who’d been pushed into a desk job, and this was his old ship and officers. I had to reconfirm that yes, those are Montalban’s real pecs, and explain why no fan was surprised that Kirk had a son he’d never met. Shatner’s rug was sadly obvious on the very large TV, too.
But still, the movie’s just as strong as it was twenty-seven years ago. Starr cried again during the funeral (a quite appropriate response), but this time did so for Scotty’s nephew as well. She explained that the “word is given” dialogue was quite realistic, and she’d seen it many times at her work: people who are dying, and know it, frequently ask for permission to do so. They need to know that it’s okay for them to pass away.
My bias is confirmed: TWoK remains a stronger film than The Voyage Home or First Contact, though it’s in fine company with those two. The reboot movie, though I enjoyed it very much and will see it again, doesn’t come close.
You can’t make stir-fry without breaking a few chickens
Catchup gaming session last night to get back on our two-week schedule. I had the first episode of the new adventure plotted out, so of course we spent the evening copying characters to the new sheets and spending karma and nuyen. Still, the socializing was good as always, so it wasn’t a wasted evening. Must remember to give fixitup and/or ptownhiker ‘gamemaster bribery’ karma for bringing the Oreos.
The new sheets went over pretty well. I still have to fix the cyberdeck section before I’m at the 1.0 version, but since none of the players physically present are deckers, I can finish that before I send a copy to Amy. Celia came over with her guy Rip to get character descriptions from folks; she wants to do portraits of our runners to get back into her art groove. Looks like she’ll start with Jesse and unit_9. She may play some NPCs for me or do ‘special guest star’ duties when we’re missing a player.
Inspired by a comment of rattrap‘s, I ran the old “Gentleman’s Agreement” Shadowrun short film to close the evening. People were exclaming, “That’s Kim Green! That’s James Dunson!” The Video Toaster CGI received compliments as well. Sadly, the copy I showed is overly dark and heavily compressed; if I can find a cleaner one, and no one involved in the project objects, I’ll try to put it up on YouTube.
We still need a team name for this group. Maybe we can come up with one in the next two weeks.
Reconfiguring the Final Frontier
The AMC Theater at Lynnhaven Mall in Va. Beach has a new IMAX theater, so last night I loaned some of my Starfleet uniform collection to Starr and our friend Becca, and we went to see the new Star Trek movie there. I have to say, I came out of that film extremely pleased. Oh, I have a dozen tiny nitpicks, and the film wasn’t exactly as deep as some of the previous outings in the series, but when the closing credits rolled, I didn’t care about that at all.
The 10:15 showing we attended sold out of the $15 tickets, and we barely got decent seats showing up twenty minutes early. (I’d bought our tickets online the night before.) I only saw one other person in costume, a local TCC Astronomy professor in a TOS Sciences t-shirt; but we hit the mall and a restaurant before the movie, and got plenty of Vulcan salutes, shouted compliments, and picture requests. I can easily remember when wearing the uniform in public meant taking crap from random passersby. Times have changed! We didn’t get home until 1am, and Starr had a 5:30 wakeup call for work, but she insisted that didn’t matter: we had a movie to watch!
Commentary with spoilers behind the cut
Brief updates
- 10:14 Ok, fandom: if you say, “Oh, I want to be *just like* Rorschach”, or indeed any Watchmen char, I suspect you’ve utterly missed the point. #
- 10:33 Huh. The WoW Armory seems to be busted, I can’t look anyone up. #
- 11:08 @UrsulaV Fools on the Internet are like the legendary Hydra – cut one down, and two more spring forth to replace it. #
- 13:21 Meiran’s going to want to see this: tinyurl.com/aum42e 1978 “Lost Ark” story conference, Lucas and Spielberg (125pg. PDF) #
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Brief updates
- 08:26 @tangowildheart Vilya was the elven Ring of Air, on the hand of Elrond in LotR. #
- 11:20 I can’t remember the zip code of the last place I worked, but I can give you the names of the three elven rings in no time. *eyeroll* #
- 12:40 @meiran Be strong. We may knock one down, but the Internet has a nigh-infinite-supply of idiots. #
- 18:13 Rumor going around that Daft Punk will score the “Tron 2” movie. tinyurl.com/b7ru6h Probably BS, but my nerd heart is soaring. #
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Brief updates
- 06:25 Since I didn’t manage to see a single new movie in 2008, the Oscars piqued my interest not at all. #
- 09:15 Sewing machine FAIL. Got nice book, but was too busy with other errands this weekend to sit down and play with machine. Maybe later this wk. #
- 19:14 @fuzzface00 I found out about the anti-air flak in WoW the hard way myself! Thank goodness for mage Blink and Invisibility. #
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20 SF Movies
There’s a “25 Things About Me” meme going around Facebook. Rather than just re-post it here, I was inspired by John Scalzi’s column to write “20 Memories of Sci-Fi Movies of My Youth”. Agreed, it’s not quite a catchy a title, but I can live with that.
1) The first SF movie I saw in the theaters was “Star Wars”, when I was seven. I remember seeing the commercials and thinking, “Meh, might be okay.” Yeah, underestimated that one a bit. I do not remember “Episode 4” atop the opening crawl. The John Williams soundtrack spent long hours in the following months accompanying my pretending to blast TIE fighters from a laser gun turret.
2) The next one I recall seeing in the theaters was “Starcrash”. This would only have been a good movie had I been old enough to enjoy Caroline Munro’s outfit. I can’t remember too much about it now, which may be a good thing, but I’m tempted to find a copy and enjoy the badness from a whole new perspective.
3) “Close Encounters” confused and frightened me, especially the part where Richard Dreyfuss starts losing his sanity. I didn’t understand the ending at that age, either. In fact, to this day, there’s a lot of unexplained bits having to do with the aliens, which is just as well; I suspect that any explanation from Spielberg would have been far lamer than the mystery.
4) While we’re on such movies, I was mildly traumatized by the laser surgery and ‘cannibal’ robot in “Logan’s Run”, and I didn’t understand the whole “Carousel” thing at all. That’s another movie which is probably unwise to watch before puberty, especially in a midnight showing in a darkened house.
5) “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”: Wow, new Klingon ships. Whoa whoa, new Klingons! Triple whoa: I am in love with the new Enterprise model! Okay, excellent, what’s going to happen for the next ninety minutes? Oh. Not much. I’m glad I never took it in to my head to get myself one of that movie’s uniforms.
Bowling for Dilithium
I don’t even know who won the Super Bowl. As the “Mythbusters” marathon unreeled in the background, I spent the day doing laundry and dishes, finding our digital camera which has been lost for three months, and making a little box for the new kitten’s food bowl. The box has an opening through which only she should be able to fit, therefore keeping the other cats from stealing her kitten food. Older cats seem to love kitten food.
Anyway, the Internet’s allowed me to catch up on some of the Super Bowl movie trailers. J.J. Abrams has done me a favor, I think; it’s finally gotten through my head that this is not the Star Trek I grew up on, and that I need to stop worrying and just go along for the ride, or not. Right now, I’m still on the side of giving it a shot – if nothing else, it’s audacious, and the franchise needs “audacious” badly. Besides, I’m a bit impressed with their method of crowbarring this story into 40 years of canon whether it ought to fit or not.
Plus, Enterprise appears to have a LOT of firepower these days. In that one half-second clip, she seems to be absolutely dumping phasers and photorps on whatever’s upset her. Battletech players, remember the “alpha strike”? “Screw the heat, screw the ammo, fire everything!!!”
Having said that: the Ninth Doctor as the arms-dealing mastermind behind Cobra is awesome, but I already miss his mask. And the Baroness’ bodysuit. Also, Land of the Lost didn’t look too bad, once we take out the bits with 20-century junk lying around. And the bits with Will Ferrell. Oh, wait…
