Tag Archives: movie

Reassessing Star Trek: The Motion Picture

I watched Star Trek: The Motion Picture again. This time I watched the DVD, which contains the movie as completed by the director.

For those who don’t know, it was one of those movie projects from hell. It started off as a TV series pilot episode, went through half a dozen scripts, was turned into a movie, was turned back into a TV series, then got sold as a movie and had to be completed in an unfeasibly short amount of time. There wasn’t time to pre-screen it, and Paramount wouldn’t let it be edited after the premiere, because they thought that might suggest a lack of confidence.

The special effects were state of the art for 1979, using such amazing things as lasers and fiber optic cables. In those pre-computer days, many scenes needed to be composited from six differently exposed pieces of film. The wormhole sequence not only required exposure times of several minutes per frame for the wormhole effect, it also required that every single frame of live action be hand-rotoscoped…

The end result was that special effects went way, way over budget, and big chunks of movie (including dialog) had to be cut because they couldn’t afford the time or money to complete the corresponding effects.

For the DVD release, Robert Wise has managed to restore most of the missing dialog, and trim some of the excessive dialog-free sections he wanted to trim after he first saw the completed movie himself at the premiere. Scenes on Vulcan have new cheese-less scenery. The result is… well, it’s better, but it’s still not wonderful.

Paramount should certainly be commended for trying to do it right. Robert Wise was an experienced SF director who understood cinema composition. Alan Dean Foster knew how to write a screenplay. Isaac Asimov consulted on the science. And Douglas Trumbull had created the effects for 2001 and Silent Running. Yet ultimately, it’s the movie’s towering ambition that ruins it. It clearly wants to be Star Trek’s version of 2001, yet it never quite makes it.

The sequence of Kirk and Scotty approaching the Enterprise in dock recalls the docking sequence of Kubrick’s epic; yet this one had me asking why the hell they had to fly the length of the ship three times, and why they couldn’t just get on with the movie. The V’ger slit scan effects are just Douglas Trumbull’s stargate sequence revisited with the addition of motion control cameras. Even the theme of man transcending into a new level of being mimics the end of 2001.

There are still some rough edges, too. When the Enterprise is in the wormhole, it was all too apparent that only Ilia (Persis Khambatta) was bouncing and jiggling in her seat to make it look like the ship was shaking. Granted, she’s the only member of the cast I’d really want to see jiggling, but that’s not the point… The point is, Kubrick would have made them do another fifty takes if necessary, until they got the scenes right.

Much as I like widescreen aspect ratio, there are also some technical issues caused by the state of the art in Panavision in the late 70s. Some shots had to be composited to get around depth of field problems, leaving blurs across parts of the bridge. In a couple of scenes, the background shows crewmembers who are obviously a little too still—they’re optical stills!

While the original theatrical release emphasized special effects too much, the Director’s edition tries to please the hardcore Star Trek fans a bit too much, I think. It becomes way too much like an extended TV episode—which isn’t entirely surprising, given its history.

The summary: If you’ve seen the movie but not seen this version, it’s worth seeing, in much the same way that the Director’s Cut of Blade Runner is worth seeing. If you’re not a Star Trek fan, do yourself a favor and skip it.

Impostor

I watched Impostor last night. It’s a pretty authentic adaptation of the Philip K. Dick story, right down to making the “bug” ships look and work the way Dick described them. Production values are high, with some impressive sets that almost rival GATTACA, and good attention to detail. The making-of documentary mentions that they tried to avoid using CGI, instead using real sets filled with real equipment and video screens. A wise decision, as the CGI establishing shots somehow don’t work.

The direction, sadly, falls victim to cliché. Too much running around in tunnels, too many air duct escapes, too many fast cuts with musical stabs trying to keep the tension high, too much slow motion combat. Since it’s a Dick story there are several plot twists, but sadly there’s only one that you might not see a mile off.

The movie started off as a 45 minute short feature, and ultimately it still plays like an extended high-budget episode of The Outer Limits. Most of the plot holes occur as a result of trying to stretch it out to 90 minutes.

Overall, a reasonable way to kill an hour or two if you’re an SF fan, but it’s no Minority Report.

Minority Report

Was supposed to be going out on a boat last night, but there were storm warnings so the skipper cancelled. Mark called, and I ended up meeting him and sara downtown and going to see Minority Report.

As a huge Philip K. Dick fan, I had to see it. I’d gathered that it was good from the reviews, but I wasn’t expecting too much. In the end, though, it’s probably one of the best movie adaptations of a Phil Dick story. It doesn’t remove most of the plot twists, like Total Recall. It doesn’t skip all the religious content, like Blade Runner. It doesn’t have an incredibly irritating opening sequence that gives away the plot, like Barjo. It’s not quite as true-to-Dick as Screamers, but it’s pretty close.

I’ve seen some people complain that the humor is out of place. Well, Phil Dick’s books often contain humor; in fact, Galactic Pot-Healer is more of a comedy than anything else. What was intrusive was some of the mawkish sentimentality; but I suppose a Spielberg movie without sentimentality would be like a David Lynch movie without long tracking shots.

Anyway… it’s worth seeing, in spite of at least one plot hole so gapingly huge you could drive a truck through it. It’s a rare movie that I can’t predict how it’s going to end at least half an hour from the final credits, so bravo to Spielberg for at least keeping me guessing longer than The Usual Suspects or Se7en.

After the movie, we went to Chinatown to find something to eat. Buddha’s Delight was closed, so Mark took us to a place he knew. sara and I couldn’t help but notice that we were the only caucasians in the restaurant, but once I’d noted the fact it ceased to bother me.

The T was packed with suburban sports fans on the way home. I really wish the politicians had called the Red Sox’ bluff and told them to go move to Rhode Island if they wanted a handout.

The MPAA can bite me

I ordered the uncensored version of Eyes Wide Shut on DVD from Hong Kong. It’s the version with the (deliberately unerotic) orgy scene intact and as Kubrick intended, and is clearly far too dangerous a piece of art for the fragile American psyche. Region-switching DVD players are your friend.

Media whoredom

It’s not particularly noteworthy that Tom Green won “Worst Movie of 2001” for Freddy Got Fingered. It’s not even noteworthy that he won multiple awards—worst movie, worst actor, worst script, worst screen couple…

However, it’s somewhat amusing that he became the second winner ever to collect his awards in person. He took along his own roll of red carpet too.

Dark Star

It looked like Dark Star on DVD was disappearing from the stores, so I decided I had to get a copy. Picked it up for $10 including shipping.

If you’re not familiar with this particular cult movie, all you need to know is: (a) it was written by the same guy as “Alien”, and inspired that movie; (b) it’s a comedy; and (c) it was directed by John Carpenter. If that isn’t enough to get you interested, consider the original poster tagline: “Bombed out in space with a spaced-out bomb”.

The Mothman Prophecies

Since I missed the MLK day holiday while I was down in Florida, I took a random day off today. I met up with Mark, and he took me to a restaurant in Chinatown and ordered something in Chinese. What turned up was a plate of some kind of dark green beans, a plate of crispy tofu, and some rice. It was good, as was the tea. Then he showed me a pastry shop that sells cakes comparable to Mike’s Pastry, but for under a buck each.

After that, we went to the cinema and watched The Mothman Prophecies. Like the director’s previous movie, Arlington Road, it had a very striking visual style—I used to think that Terry Gilliam would be the ideal director for a movie of “Watchmen”, but now I think it would be Mark Pellington. The soundtrack was adeptly assembled and devoid of cliché too—tomandandy at work. Having said all that, it wasn’t as good a movie as Arlington Road—it never quite achieved the same degree of tension. I’d compare it to a moderately good X-Files episode with better cinematography.

“Mr Death”

Yesterday I watched Mr Death, Errol Morris’s documentary about Fred Leuchter Jr. The movie tells the story in Morris’s usual style: stay out of sight, and let the subject do the talking. Illustrate with interesting composition, archive footage, and re-enactments. Refrain from moralizing or pushing a particular agenda.

For those who don’t know: Leuchter was an engineer who, quite by accident, built up quite a reputation in the death business. He started out renovating old electric chairs, before moving on to design the lethal injection system used in many US states. Then one day he was asked if he could provide expert testimony in a Canadian legal case in which a Holocaust Revisionist was being prosecuted for hatemongering.

Fred took a plane trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau with his wife, a translator, and a cameraman. He wandered around the ruins, chipping off bits of brick and plaster without permission. He smuggled them back to Massachusetts, where he sent them to a chemical lab for analysis. He then wrote an infamous document called The Leuchter Report, which you can almost certainly find via Google if you want to.

The problem was, Fred didn’t really know anything about the chemistry of gas on solids. The lab tested for cyanide—but they tested the entire sample, not the few microns near the surface that might have shown traces of exposure to gas. Fred didn’t know about history either—he stumbled around assuming nothing at the site had changed, whereas in fact many of the buildings were disassembled to rebuild nearby farmhouses. Fred also didn’t know German, so he didn’t visit the Auschwitz archive, which has extensive original blueprints and other documentation showing that there were in fact ventilation systems and other essentials of mass execution by gas.

After publishing his report and testifying in the trial, Leuchter suddenly found that his old business contacts no longer wanted to associate with him. His wife left him, and he was driven out of Massachusetts for practicing engineering without a license. He turned to his new friends—he headed for California, where he was promised a job by someone in the Holocaust Revisionist movement.

The job failed to materialize, and Fred found himself locked out of his room. He now apparently makes a living giving speeches to adoring fans at Revisionist conferences.

It’s a sad tale of how a gullible nobody believed what people told him, and told them what they wanted to hear, so that he could feel important and famous. And in the end, it destroyed his marriage and his career.

“Mr Smith Goes To Washington”

I watched Mr Smith Goes To Washington last night. It’s one of those movies that you just have to watch if you’re a movie fan.

Unfortunately, I didn’t think all that much of it. It’s overlong at 129 minutes, too sugary in places, and the children are portrayed in a gratingly “Gosh, gee willikers Mister!” style. I’m still glad I watched it, though.