The Screengrab : j.j. abrams

Screengrab Review: "Star Trek" - Scott's Take

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 06 May 2009 18:30:00 GMT

As J.J. Abrams’ mega-hyped, blockbuster-in-waiting reboot of the Star Trek franchise begins, we might be watching any other movie in the series. The usual massive space behemoth posing a threat to the continued existence of the galaxy has materialized, and Starfleet is racing to the rescue. As the responding vessel is not named Enterprise, it’s all reduced to fireballs and cinders in a matter of minutes. But something is different: the captain of the destroyed starship is named Kirk…George Kirk, whose son James Tiberius is born on an escaping shuttlecraft even as his father heroically goes down with the ship. There’s your back story: roguish adventurer Jim Kirk can’t help what he is – he was literally born into it.

All right, so there’s a little more back story than that. There’s the half-human, half-Vulcan Spock’s tormented youth at the hands of his cold, emotionless peers, and the tween Kirk joyriding in a borrowed “vintage” convertible, and smoking hot space cadet Uhura (Zoe Saldana) fending off the advances of twentysomething townie Kirk (Chris Pine) while slumming in a bar outside the Iowa-based Starfleet Academy.

It all sounds like the makings of a feature-length fanwank, but Abrams is nothing if not a clever fellow and he has a few tricks up his sleeve. It’s not just that the mega-threat is a vengeance-seeking Romulan from the future named Nero (Eric Bana) – that’s just another day at the office in the Star Trek realm – but that he’s seeking his vengeance against the future version of Spock we all know and love, played by Leonard Nimoy. And that the youthful Spock (Zachary Quinto) is unable to prevent the cataclysmic first phase of Nero’s revenge, an epic event that may have hardcore Trekkies shaking their fists at the screen and howling in outrage, “That never happened!”

They’d be wrong, however, because Abrams and his writers Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman have come up with an ingenious loophole that allows them to clear the decks of all the clutter comprising four decades worth of Trek mythology. Abrams doesn’t have to worry too much about being reverent, which allows him to rev it up and have some fun. And Star Trek is an undeniably fun summer ride – it’s got the big thrills, big laughs and special effects that blow away any and all earlier incarnations of Trek, and only rarely insults the intelligence. (You won’t want to give too much deep thought to the “science” involving black holes and red matter.)

The cast is game, although Abrams comes up against the same stumbling block that often bedeviled the original series and its spinoff movies: finding enough for the supporting characters to do. Uhura has a beefed-up role (and there’s a nifty piece of misdirection involving her character) and Simon Pegg makes the most of his brief screen time as Scotty, but the crotchety Bones (Karl Urban) gets short shrift, and Sulu (John Cho) and Chekov (Anton Yelchin) are still just a guy who can fence and a Russian with a funny accent (“Enemy wessels approaching!”) respectively. (And let’s not even speak of the regrettable stunt casting of Winona Ryder and Tyler Perry in minor roles.)

As it ever was, the focus is on the Kirk/Spock dynamic, which is where the turning-back-the-clock element really pays off. There’s a sharper edge to the relationship here, as the hotheaded man of action and the cool, logical half-alien size each other up as both rivals and potential allies. Quinto has inherited Nimoy’s knack for infusing his matter-of-fact pronouncements with almost subliminal dry wit, and while there’s really no replacing the Shat Man, Pine is surprisingly adept at evoking the bravado and bluster of Kirk without devolving into parody. As unlikely as it once seemed, it looks like the ol’ Enterprise has a few more light-years left in it after all.

Nick's Take

Screengrab Review: "Star Trek" - Nick's Take

Nick Schager — Wed, 06 May 2009 18:00:00 GMT

Hardcore Trekkers can debate whether J.J. Abrams has committed heresy with his franchise-restarter Star Trek. For those not deeply invested in Gene Roddenberry’s humanist sci-fi series, however, this summer spectacular will prove a largely thrilling surprise, its blend of humor, romance and action so kinetically orchestrated that calling out its shortcomings feels like excessive carping. By constructing a story around planet-devouring black holes that function as time-travel portals, Abrams not only affords himself a premise fit for grand intergalactic conflicts but also a handy explanation for why Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto), McCoy (Karl Urban) and their fellow Starfleet peace-keepers only sort of resemble themselves. It’s an alternate reality Star Trek, and all the better for it, serving up the type of breakneck thrills and operatic excitement that’s been absent from this sci-fi universe since 1982’s Wrath of Khan. A distinctly modern blockbuster that comes on like gangbusters and rarely lets up, it re-confirms that Abrams – after energizing Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible saga in 2006 – is a director tailor-made for event pics, his sleek, lens-flared cinematographic style and vigorously to-the-point pacing well-suited for the demands of mega-budgeted tentpole extravaganzas.

In this reconfigured Star Trek, whose mythos occasionally recalls Star Wars, Kirk’s dad dies saving his starship’s inhabitants and, specifically, his wife and newborn baby, and Kirk himself grows up to be a devil-may-care bad boy squandering his potential in cornfielded Iowa. Convinced by paternalistic Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood) to follow his father’s footsteps by joining the Starfleet Academy, he immediately finds himself in conflict with Spock, a rather disagreeable know-it-all struggling to reconcile his dual heritage as a logical Vulcan and (thanks to human mom Winona Ryder) an emotional Earthling. Much of Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman’s script centers on Kirk and Spock’s combative relationship, though along the way it also deftly provides introductions to the rest of the iconic Enterprise crew, including amusingly grouchy McCoy, mini-skirted sexpot Uhura (Zoe Saldana), tough Sulu (John Cho), goofy Chekhov (Anton Yelchin), and witty Scotty (Simon Pegg). As befitting an origin story, Abrams lavishes most of the attention on establishing his characters’ various relationships, a guiding directive that he admirably pulls off, with the writer/director sneaking in trademark catchphrases and allusions to signature moments in Star Trek history while allowing his new cast to make the revered characters their own.

Pine channels William Shatner’s ladies-man egomania with a playfulness that makes light of the legendary Kirk’s machismo, Urban’s McCoy grumbles with a gusto that would make DeForest Kelly proud, and Quinto gives Spock a smarty-pants attitude that differentiates him from that of Leonard Nimoy’s original Vulcan, who [spoiler alert] eventually figures prominently in the narrative proper. That plot involves Romulan madman Nero (Eric Bana) traveling back in time to exact revenge on Spock and the Federation for his home world’s demise, a scheme to destroy Earth that inevitably feels shoehorned into a film whose primary concern is setting up interpersonal dynamics that can be further developed in sequels. Thanks to the tacked-on nature of Kirk’s battle with Nero, as well as a few too-curt editorial choices that don’t maximize the scenario for thrills, Star Trek falters slightly during its climax. Yet it’s a minor speed bump on an otherwise brisk ride, one that avoids indulging in the franchise’s characteristic social/political allegory in favor of straightforward, uncomplicated sci-fi melodrama and mayhem. Light on its feet, free from the self-seriousness of its predecessors, and shrewd enough to keep one wanting more by not overstaying its welcome, Abrams’ breathless reboot achieves the improbable, forcefully reviving a series that many, including myself, believed had deservedly been left for dead.

Scott's Take

Precursors: Mission: Impossible III (2006)

Nick Schager — Mon, 04 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Those interested in fully readying themselves for this Friday’s Star Trek would be wise to bypass the franchise’s myriad small- and big-screen iterations and instead take a second look at Mission: Impossible III, the first and most recent franchise to get a vigorous kick in the behind from J.J. Abrams. Unfairly dismissed during its summer 2006 release because of star Tom Cruise’s couch-hopping antics and crazy comments about psychology and anti-depressants, the third Mission: Impossible remains the series’ most accessible and breathlessly exciting, characteristics mainly attributable to its director, who took on the project without any prior experience helming a tentpole extravaganza, and yet provided the no-nonsense adrenalized excitement absent from Brian De Palma’s intricate first and John Woo’s embarrassingly flamboyant second installments. Abrams borrows liberally from his TV series Alias as well as countless other sources for his story about IMF agent Ethan Hunt’s efforts to hunt down a Maguffin from a master criminal (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who’s kidnapped his new wife (Michelle Monaghan). And to be sure, not all of the narrative works, most notably with regards to its efforts to humanize the more-or-less superhuman Hunt. Still, Hoffman’s villain is excellent, and Abrams’ action-and-espionage centerpiece sequences have a visceral, invigorating electricity that one hopes Star Trek – which I’ll be reviewing here at The Screengrab later this week – also possesses.

Screengrab Predicts: The Top 5 Hits of Summer 2009 (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 21:30:00 GMT

Paul:
Looking at this summer’s would-be blockbusters, I only see two real sure-thing titles. But while this leaves a lot of question marks to those trying to predict which titles will hit big, it also leaves a lot of room to predict some potential sleeper movies to come out of nowhere, given good word of mouth and the right marketing campaign. I’m almost sure I’ll regret these hasty decisions sometime around mid-May, but that’s just part of the game, isn’t it?

3. TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN (June 24)

Paul:
Remember those two sure things I mentioned before? Here’s one of them: let’s not underestimate the box office prospects of Transformers, a mistake that was made by many Hollywood insiders prior to the release of the first Transformers movie. Yes, the Michael Bay name didn’t give many people hope, but audiences turned out in droves all the same thanks to a combination of eighties nostalgia and the desire to watch giant robots kicking ass. If anything, the sequel promises even more action and destruction, hopefully with less dopey humor getting in the way. Getting released just before the July 4 weekend can only help its prospects.

Nick:
Michael Bay’s Transformers made $319 million domestically in 2007. And unless Tony Scott’s The Taking of Pelham 123 (June 12) has legs, or Michael Mann’s Public Enemies (July 1) becomes a runaway smash, there’s little slam-bang competition surrounding Fallen’s June 24th release. Consequently, there’s no reason to suspect that this more-is-better sequel – featuring a wider roster of Autobots and Decepticons, as well as mega-hottie Megan Fox – won’t be greeted with massive box-office enthusiasm.

Scott:
I don’t want this to be true, but I have to be a realist when doing these projections. Otherwise I’d have the new Jarmusch movie in this slot, and that ain’t gonna happen. Bay + LaBeouf = big box office once again.

Andrew:
Blechh.

2. STAR TREK (May 8)

Scott:
The sequel is already in the works, so you know Paramount is feeling bullish. More than four decades worth of built-in fan base can’t hurt, but even non-Trekkies are likely to be swept up by the hype, which may dwarf even William Shatner’s ego by the time this is released.

Andrew:
I noted this as one of the films I was most excited to see in 2009, even though I fully expect to be disappointed and I’m way too old for this kind of nonsense. But being a Star Trek fan is like being Catholic...it gets into your system early, and once it’s there, it’s there for good, resurfacing when you least expect it, flying in the face of all the logic and common sense you otherwise thought you had.

Nick:
Trekkies (or Trekkers, or whatever they want to be called) will turn out in droves for J.J. Abrams’ reimagining of their beloved series. So too will the uninitiated, thanks to the Mission: Impossible III director’s decision to place as great an emphasis on breathless, epic action as on franchise minutiae.

Paul:
Will old-school Trekkers be down with a reboot of their beloved franchise with an almost entirely new cast? Will non-Trek fans even care? And why do the studios continue to release their big-budget movies in the second weekend of May (a.k.a. the Speed Racer weekend), which has consistently proven to be a box-office dead zone?

1. HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE (July 15)

Paul:
Here’s that other sure thing. I eventually decided to make Potter my top pick for several reasons. First, the Potter-philes have been salivating over this latest installment ever since the last movie two summers ago, and the ballyhoo over the release date (pushed back from last November) has only heightened their excitement. Secondly, Half-Blood Prince appears to be the most action-packed entry in the series to date, which should be enough to bring out the more casual fans of the series who might otherwise have waited for DVD. And finally, there’s the mid-July release date, which proved so lucrative for The Dark Knight last year. With relatively little competition in the surrounding weeks, Potter should rule the latter part of the summer, and if I was a Warner exec, I’d try my damnedest to secure this weekend every year.

Nick:
It was delayed from last Fall to July 15, meaning anticipation is high. And it’s the installment in which a key figure bites the supernatural bullet. Both of those facts (as well as a PG rating) should make this sixth Harry Potter film gargantuan.

Scott:
The Potter freaks were hopping mad when Warner Bros. delayed this release last fall, but let’s not kid ourselves; all will be forgiven when it finally rolls into theaters.

Andrew:
I haven’t read the books, but I’m devoted to the film series...and I’m a grown-ass man. For my fellow adults who keep sincerely trying to convince me the books themselves are the sorts of things that adults should actually be reading, and especially for all the kids out there who grew up on J.K. Rowling’s really pretty awesome juggernaut -- I’m still totally digging the gay Dumbledore thing, for instance -- NOT seeing Half-Blood isn’t even an option. Plus, Emma Watson is no longer jailbait, so I’m now officially allowed to look at her boobies.

Click Here For The Hits (Part One), The Bombs (Part Three), The Toss-Ups (Part Four) and The Honorable Mentions (Parts Five & Six)

Contributors: Paul Clark, Nick Schager, Scott Von Doviak, Andrew Osborne

“Star Trek” Beams Down in Austin

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Proving again that there is no truth in advertising, a theater full of Star Trek fans promised a shiny print of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan were instead forced at phaser point to sit through the new J.J. Abrams reboot of the franchise due in theaters next month. To say this is an outrage would be an understatement. I stayed up all night putting the finishing touches on my Ricardo Montalban breastplate! Do you know how many times I rehearsed Khan’s big speech so I’d be prepared to emote along as he announced, “I'll chase him round the moons of Nibia and round the Antares maelstrom and round perdition's flames before I give him up!”? And all that for nothing. I was so upset, I actually left my tricorder in the men’s room.

All right, I didn’t actually attend the screening last night. I’m always up for a little Khan, but I really don’t want to be in a theater full of people who are really, really up for a little Khan. Call me a hypocrite if you must, but now I know I missed out on a big surprise. This is the event as originally advertised by the Alamo Drafthouse: “Fantastic Fest and Ain’t It Cool News present a free screening of STAR TREK 2: THE WRATH OF KHAN with an exclusive sneak preview of 10 minutes of NEVER BEFORE SEEN footage from the new STAR TREK!” According to Wired, Leonard Nimoy – yep, Ol’ Gray Ears himself – stunned the audience with a surprise appearance and announced that they would be seeing “the entire new movie just hours before it made its international bow in Sydney.”

If anyone was disappointed by the bait and switch, they weren’t tweeting about it. Slashfilm has collected reactions ranging from Harry Knowles’ predictable “holy fuck! the new Star Trek fucking rules the universe” to the more restrained “ZOMG!! Just saw the new star trek movie and it MELTED MY PANTS!!!!!\” This is all well and good, but it still raises the troubling question: Can we ever trust the Alamo Drafthouse again? For instance, tonight’s schedule would have us believe that the “Young Frankenstein Quote-Along” is on tap, but if I show up in my Igor hoodie, how do I know I won’t get some new Will Ferrell remake of Young Frankenstein I haven’t even heard about yet?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go look for my tricorder.

Related:
Your First Look at Star Trek 90210
Harlan Ellison vs. Star Trek, Paramount, et al - Round XXVI

Morning Deal Report: Star Trek’s Continuing Voyage

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:30:00 GMT

The Star Trek reboot won’t be in theaters until May 8, but Paramount is already going forward with a sequel. The studio “has hired Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof to pen the screenplay. J.J. Abrams, who directed and produced the latest chapter, is onboard to produce the follow-up alongside his Bad Robot partner Bryan Burk. No decision has been made yet on whether Abrams will return behind the camera for the sequel,” Variety reports.

Drew Barrymore and Justin Long are Going the Distance. That’s right, Drew Barrymore is making a romantic comedy. You can only get this sort of shocking news right here at the Morning Deal Report. “The story by first-time scribe Geoff LaTulippe follows a couple trying to maintain a long-distance relationship,” per The Hollywood Reporter.

State of Play director Kevin Macdonald will direct the Roman military drama The Eagle of the Ninth. “The story revolves around a wounded Roman soldier and his loyal Celtic slave who try to solve the mystery of the Ninth Legion, a brigade of Roman soldiers that vanished after heading into the untamed Highlands of Scotland 15 years earlier.” Jamie Bell is set to star.

Related:
Star Trek Showdown IV: Shatner's Last Nerve
State of Play in Hollywood

Screengrab 2009 Preview: Andrew Osborne's Picks

Andrew Osborne — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 18:00:00 GMT

Not to sound morbid, but it occurred to me recently (whilst contemplating my own mortality) that someday – hopefully some far distant day -- I’ll read an Entertainment Weekly Spring/Summer/Fall/Holiday preview issue and/or watch a flock of coming attractions trailers for a whole bunch of movies I won’t, in fact, live long enough to see.

In Zelig, Woody Allen’s chameleon character dies with just one regret: that he never got to finish reading Moby Dick. Imagine Zelig’s disappointment if he’d been a Harry Potter fan in November, forever denied the opportunity to see the cinematic adaptation of Half-Blood Prince (let alone the Deathly Hallows)? And Lord knows at this point whether any of us will live long enough to see Zack Snyder’s much-litigated version of Watchmen. (Ironically, another movie that most of us seem destined never to see is Fanboys, about a cancer-stricken geek in 1998 determined, in yet another layer of sad irony, to see the as-yet-unreleased Phantom Menace before he dies...but I digress.)

Anyhow, with my wife and I both fighting various wintry ailments (and going on a solid week of sleep deprivation thanks to the itchy throats and sinus pressure of the damned), it’s hard to look forward to anything at this point beyond still yet more mucus...but if I should manage somehow to survive this relentlessly cold, snowy New England winter (good Lord...it’s only JANUARY?), then here are the five upcoming 2009 releases I’m most looking forward to:

5. HARRY POTTER & THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE

I originally posted this in my 2008 Fall Preview before Warner Bros. saw fit to switch the release date of the sixth J.K. Rowling adaptation to 2009, but the following still holds true: I haven’t read a single word of Ms. Rowling’s fantastically popular and beloved series of novels, but I’ve followed the relatively unprecedented blockbuster cinematic serialization religiously. I’ll go on record here as a big fan of Christopher Columbus’ unfairly maligned adaptation of Sorcerer’s Stone, and I thought Alfonso Cuarón’s Prisoner of Azkaban was bizarrely overpraised, but in general, the series just keeps getting better and better, and I can’t wait for the next episode.

4. STAR TREK

Yes, I’ve heard the Star Trek 90210 jokes, and no, the last few Star Trek movies have not exactly instilled fans with a lot of confidence in the franchise -- but as with J.J. Abrams’ day job, the increasingly ludicrous and exasperating Lost, I simply have no choice in the matter: I’m still going to watch. My Dad recently reminded me of the time he drove my geeky pubescent ass to a Star Trek convention through a full-scale Perfect Storm blizzard just so I could buy myself a Tribble and hang out with bosomy fangirls dressed like Yeoman Rand. So yes, good or bad, I’ll definitely be seeing this one – (alone, notes my wife).

3. WHIP IT!

I couldn’t find any clips of Drew Barrymore’s upcoming directorial debut about a misfit teen (Ellen Page) who joins an Austin, Texas roller-derby team. Instead, the trailer above is for Hell On Wheels, an astonishing documentary about the girl-powered rockabilly roller derby revival that sparked in Austin and spread across the nation. In the film, director Bob Ray captures the birth and hilarious, harrowing growing pains of the Lonestar Rollergirls, an all-female, D.I.Y. enterprise that transforms from weekend lark to serious business when big money and crippling injuries raise the stakes of a burgeoning start-up, leading to shattered friendships (and fibulas) and a fiery schism between two factions of fiercely independepent entrepeneurs. Short skirts + third wave feminism + breathtaking banked track action + Marxist/capitalist tensions + a fascinating cast of real-life characters & a kick-ass soundtrack = one of the best movies of 2007. I doubt Whip It! will be as good, but with Barrymore, Page, Kristin Wiig and Juliette Lewis strapping on the skates and kneepads, I’m more than willing to give this one the benefit of the doubt.

2. INGLORIOUS BASTERDS

When I saw John Waters interview Quentin Tarantino on a panel at the Provincetown Film Festival last year, the erstwhile Mr. Brown said he’d set himself the goal of finishing his “guys on a mission” World War II spaghetti Western lollapalooza (starring Brad Pitt, Maggie Cheung, The Office’s B.J. Novak, Freaks & Geeks’ Samm Levine and...really? Mike Myers?) in time for this year’s Cannes Film Festival. With the exception of roughly 42 percent of Death Proof, Tarantino has never yet steered me entirely wrong (I didn’t even mind his segment of the disastrous Four Rooms), and when he’s on his game (as he could easily be with this project) he is, like the wallet says, a Bad Motherfucker. It’s possible, of course, he won’t finish the film in time for a 2009 release...in which case, be looking for Basterds at the top of my 2010 movie preview list.

1. THE MEAT CITY BEATNIKS

As I mentioned on Thanksgiving Day in the 2008 Screengrab Holiday Special, I began shooting this ultra-low budget guerilla indie musical about screenwriters on the make and a drug deal gone bad (co-scripted by my esteemed Screengrab colleague Scott Von Doviak, based on a short story by Jim Dryden, with music by Eric Jacobson) way back in January 2008 (or possibly the late fall of 2007...it’s all a bit hazy at this point). Of all the releases I hope to see in 2009, this tops the list if only because it will mean (A) I’ve finally finished post-production and (B) it actually got released. Like Basterds, though, I’m not betting the farm on this one actually seeing the light of day before 2010...but if ever there was a year for hope, it’s this one!

HAPPY YEAR OF THE OX!

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Morning Deal Report: Harrison Ford and Rachel McAdams Wake to “Morning Glory”

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Harrison Ford will play a “grizzled old-school anchor in the Ted Koppel mold who quits in disgust with the gossip-heavy direction of the evening newscast” in Morning Glory, per The Hollywood Reporter. “He is then recruited by a hot up-and-coming producer (Rachel McAdams) to help revive a morning talk show, only to be paired with his rival.” J.J. Abrams is producing under his Bad Robot banner.

Gore Verbinski is developing a project based on a 2007 Wall Street Journal article “about the online fantasy role-playing world and its detrimental impact on the real lives of players,” Variety reports. “The article by Alexandra Alter focuses on a married man who spends as many as 20 hours a day on a computer, existing through an avatar who is a thriving, musclebound entrepreneur. In reality, he is a diabetic, chain-smoking 53-year-old.” Verbinski needs a title. How about Second Skin?

Cheech and Chong aren’t ready to put down the bong anytime soon. In addition to the live concert movie already announced, the duo will join forces for Cheech and Chong's Smokin' Animated Movie, based on their library of classic comedy routines. “"It's great to be doing a movie where Cheech and I never have to get out of bed or be on camera," Chong said.

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Trailer Review: Star Trek

Paul Clark — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 17:00:00 GMT

One of the many cinematic sins that George Lucas should probably be held accountable for is the rash of “prequels” that infested the moviegoing landscape once Phantom Menace hit the scene. Oh sure, the idea was nothing new, from “origin story” comic books to the occasional movie like Butch and Sundance: The Early Years. Yet had Lucas not gone to the Star Wars well one- OK, three- more times a decade ago, I doubt we’d be seeing this rather feeble reboot of the Star Trek franchise nowadays, in which fanboy fave J.J. Abrams has gotten Paramount to bankroll something that’s essentially a bit of fanfiction. Now, I’ve got nothing against movies that are unapologetically geeks. I suppose that what bugs me most about this isn’t so much that the characters we grew up on are being played by a cast of new and largely clean-scrubbed actors, as that I honestly don’t feel like it’s necessary for a movie to exists that explains away the younger days of the old Trek gang. I mean, gee, who would have guessed that the young Kirk was a rebellious little punk (if this movie shows him reprogramming the Kobayashi Maru scenario, I’ll throw something at the screen)? Really, isn’t enough that we glean their natures from the way they behave in the original movies rather than seeing how they got there?

Star Trek Can't Be Metrosexual; Or, Why Action Heroes Must Have Manly Haircuts

Vadim Rizov — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:59:00 GMT

So the long-awaited Star Trek trailer dropped, by all available evidence, sometime on Saturday and was exhaustively analyzed on the Internet by everyone capable of typing with an interest. As a franchise now over the forty-year mark, there's legions of the (overly-)invested just waiting to see what J.J. Abrams was going to do to Gene Roddenberry's long-straggling franchise. (Never mind that the Mission: Impossible had been kicking around for just as long when he got around to doing the third installment; presumably no one was that invested in the series' '88 iteration, whereas there's some desperate souls out there who still want to talk about how awesome Deep Space 9 was.)

And, of course, no one can agree on anything. But we can all agree on one thing: men who spend too much time on their hair aren't manly.

Yes, Abrams' Star Trek cast is full of pretty young things who'd be just as home on network TV making 13-year-old girls' hearts sw jasoon: Chris Pine, a TV journeyman, as Kirk, and Zachary Quinto (who apparently is on this show called "Heroes" that I really have never bothered to watch) as Spock. The smaller parts have been filled out with better but presumably less expensive supporting actors: Eric Bana, Simon Pegg, John Cho. (God bless the smart-ass who cast Winona Ryder as Spock's human mom; to suggest that her career has sunk so far that she had to find marriage on another planet is pretty hilarious.) No one, however, seems to be interested in their qualifications. Old-school Trek fans have recently been suggesting that the success of the original show rested upon its casting "real" actors with presence in the leads. This is obviously insane: Shatner was a journeyman actor going around doing bad things like trying to be one of The Brothers Karamazov, Leonard Nimoy was a guest-star on pretty much an TV series that would have him, etc. They lucked it in being a show that, whatever its campy excesses, had enough bold-faced Ideas to engage college students and create its own visual iconography — one that would subsequently be confused for a wonderful and brilliant vision, which it isn't. It's just part of the American pop-culture landscape.

Regardless: the big problem seems to be that everyone's haircut is too pretty. One "sott68" was one of the first, over at Ain't It Cool News, was the first to raise an important concern: "No Hetero kid actors available?" he wondered. "Kirk looks a bit womanish." The conservative commentators over at right-wingnut film site Dirty Harry's Place had similar concerns: "If I were a commander in a military-type body like Starfleet," explained one Jared, "any pretty-boy with the frosted hair that looks like it was commissioned in a beauty-salon instead of a barbershop would have to scrub the latrines with a brush made up of the hair we shaved off his head." One "whiskey" gets a little more explicit: "We are talking here [...] the kind of gay vibe that Hollywood insists on pushing. Guys don’t like it — they want leading men who are tough, not highly groomed, salon-friendly, sort of gay Russell Brand types."

Forget about the latent homophobia disguised as some kind of "respect" for the original; if a bunch of Star Trek nerds wants to have a nice day worrying about Kirk's masculinity (and pillory the buzzword "metrosexual" further to death), let 'em have it. What I'm really intrigued by is the idea that you can measure action-hero-viability via hair. One time I made a horrible mistake and went to the Atlas Barber School for a $4 hair-cut, only to find out that what I wanted wasn't possible; real men, it seems, get their haircuts with clippers; layering is for effeminates. Apparently this same kind of logic applies to action heroes.

But when you think about who's been cast lately as ass-kicking heroes, these commenters aren't that far off; they're merely responding to a casting stereotype that's been going on for years. Nothing against Jason Statham (no one's a bigger Transporter fan than me) or the growly-voiced likes of Vin Diesel, but if you look at the list of frequently-shaven-headed actors who've been trying to kill everything that moves on-screen in recent years, then yes: it does definitely look like J.J. Abrams isn't just taking his casting ideas from what kind of 20something inspires teen viewing on TV, but he's actively trying to queer things up, Kirk-Uhuru sex scene or no. At least Schwarzenneger and Stallone got to keep their hair, as ridiculous as it is. If Star Trek lets action stars get nice hair-cuts, then I'm all in favor of turning Star Trek into the Brokeback Mountain of sci-fi space action.

A high-quality trailer is here; far as I'm concerned, it's just fine.

Your First Look at Star Trek 90210

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:30:00 GMT

The new Entertainment Weekly cover story has the scoop on J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot, and while the cover photo doesn’t exactly set my phasers to stun (Kirk looks like he should be leading panty raids at Starfleet Academy), at least fans can be reassured that Abrams never much cared for Trek anyway. “‘All my smart friends liked Star Trek,’ he says. ‘'I preferred a more visceral experience.’ Which is exactly why he accepted Paramount's offer in 2005 to develop a new Trek flick; creatively, he was engaged by the possibility of a Star Trek movie ‘that grabbed me the way Star Wars did.’” Oh boy!

What Abrams does like about Star Trek is its “unabashed idealism. ‘I think a movie that shows people of various races working together and surviving hundreds of years from now is not a bad message to put out right now,’ says Abrams, whose infectiously upbeat energy and disdain for cynicism are among his most marked attributes… In a world where a movie as incredibly produced as The Dark Knight is raking in gazillions of dollars, Star Trek stands in stark contrast…It was important to me that optimism be cool again.’”

The EW piece goes on to drop a few hints about the story. “Star Trek's time-travel plot is set in motion when a Federation starship, the USS Kelvin, is attacked by a vicious Romulan (Eric Bana) desperately seeking one of the film's heroes. From there, the film then brings Kirk and Spock center stage and tracks the origins of their friendship and how they became officers aboard the Enterprise…. The adventure stretches from Earth to Vulcan, and yes, it does find a way to have Nimoy appearing in scenes with at least one of the actors on our cover — and maybe both… The opening sequence, for example, is an emotionally wrenching passage that culminates with a mythic climax sure to leave zealots howling ‘Heresy!’” Admittedly, I was always more of a Trek guy than a Star Wars partisan, but I checked out long before the parade of spinoff series in recent years. A little heresy doesn’t sound like such a bad idea. Here’s the full article if you want more from Abrams and his cast (including Leonard Nimoy) and some photos from the bridge and beyond.

Related:
Star Trek Showdown: Shatner Fires Back
Star Trek Teaser Follow-Up: The Real Deal

“Star Trek” Showdown: Shatner Fires Back

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:30:00 GMT

In my review of Fanboys earlier today, I mentioned a cameo appearance by William Shatner as himself. Based on this evidence, it would appear that the Shat Man is not philosophically opposed to the idea of cameos, but in a recent interview with AMC, new Star Trek director J.J. Abrams gave a different impression. “It was very tricky. We actually had written a scene with him in it that was a flashback kind of thing, but the truth is, it didn't quite feel right. The bigger thing was that he was very vocal that he didn't want to do a cameo. We tried desperately to put him in the movie, but he was making it very clear that he wanted the movie to focus on him significantly, which, frankly, he deserves.”

Shatner claims he was never approached for a cameo. In fact, he claims this in a YouTube clip you can view after the jump. He also supplies a simple solution to the big problem Abrams cites, namely that Captain Kirk already died onscreen. Hint: it involves the “hovering machine,” and you have to throw the switch on the right.

Related:
Star Trek Teaser Follow-up: The Real Deal
In Search of Spock's Insurance Form

Morning Deal Report: How Tom Cruise Became Angelina Jolie

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:00:00 GMT

The espionage thriller Edwin A. Salt is getting more than a name change – it’s about to undergo gender reassignment surgery. Yes, it only took a dash of that old Hollywood magic to transform Tom Cruise into Angelina Jolie. (Do Katie Holmes and Brad Pitt know about this? And will there be camera crews on hand when they find out?) Cruise was originally attached to the project, which Philip Noyce will direct for Columbia Pictures, but according to Variety, Edwin “will be redrafted by screenwriter Kurt Wimmer as a star vehicle for Angelina Jolie.” She’ll play the title character (Edwina Salt?) – “a CIA officer who's accused by a defector of being a Russian sleeper spy and must elude capture long enough to establish her innocence.” Rumor has it Cruise lost interest when they wouldn’t let him wear his fat suit.

Cloverfield honcho J.J. Abrams is the new Irwin Allen. Abrams is teaming with original Omen screenwriter David Seltzer for a “disaster flick for Universal involving an earthquake,” says the Hollywood Reporter, which is quick to note that the project will not actually be a remake of the 1974 Earthquake. No word yet on whether the Abrams version will be released in Sensurround.

The young adult novel series Maximum Ride is coming to the big screen. As Variety explains it, “protags are six children who have been genetically altered to be 98% human and 2% bird. The kids, who are bred to fly, escape a lab-rat existence and are then pursued by their scientist creators, who send a pack of part-human part-wolves called Erasers to hunt them down.” Those kids live in my neighborhood and I gotta tell ya, they made a real mess of my windshield.

Related:
Tom Cruise Parodies Someone Else for a Change
Separated at Birth: "Cloverfield" and "Miracle Mile"

Morning Deal Report: Borat vs. Iron Man

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:30:00 GMT

While his wife Madonna continues to dominate the tabloid covers, Guy Ritchie is keeping busy preparing for his Sherlock showdown. As we told you last week, Ritchie’s reboot of Sherlock Holmes is getting some competition from a rival production that will star Sacha Baron Cohen as the great detective and Will Ferrell as the elementary Watson. Now Ritchie has landed his Sherlock: Robert Downey, Jr. As Variety reports, “Downey emerged as an action star with Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes also will take advantage of his physical skills as the character displays brawn as well as brains. The basis for the film is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic tales, but also the comicbook Sherlock Holmes.” The “comicbook” Variety refers to is an upcoming take by Lionel Wigram, not the classic DC version pictured here. Sorry, nerds.

Speaking of comics (and nerds): fans of the Elfquest series by Wendy and Richard Pini, commence sharpening your knives. Or swords. Or whatever it is elves carry. Dodgeball writer/director Rawson Thurber will bring your beloved Wolfriders to the big screen for Warner Bros., per the Hollywood Reporter. “The series -- which at certain points in its history was published by both Marvel and DC Comics -- attracted a more mature audience as it went along, with scenes of battles and sexuality that were intense for that time. Hollywood has long tried to adapt the series, and several attempts at an animated series or feature have been made over the years.” Hey, what could go wrong?

Who says print is dead? It’s not only comic books that are coming to the screen in droves. Remember the New York Times article 'Mystery on Fifth Avenue' that was recently optioned by J.J. Abrams? Well, according to Variety, “Miramax Films has closed a deal to develop a movie from ‘This Strange Thing Called Prom,’ a Brooke Hauser article published in the June 22 edition of the New York Times. The article follows the prom adventures of high school seniors who came to Brooklyn from locales like Senegal, Venezuela, Tibet, Haiti, Poland and Gabon (one was a nomadic yak herder until age 12).” You may laugh, but don’t you think yak herding skills would have come in handy at your prom?

Related:
No Shit, Sherlock: Guy Ritchie Reimagines Holmes
The Summer of Downey

Morning Deal Report: Time Traveling with Spike Lee

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:00:00 GMT

In re-launching the Morning Deal Report, we promised you all the latest news on comic book and videogame adaptations, but here’s one we didn’t see coming: According to the Hollywood Reporter, J.J. Abrams will soon be bringing a New York Times feature to the big screen. The article, entitled “Mystery on Fifth Avenue,” concerns “an Upper East Side luxury apartment on Fifth Avenue that the occupants had redesigned to include hidden compartments, messages, puzzles, poems, codes and games for their four preteen kids.” The $8.5 million residence houses “an elaborately clever ‘scavenger hunt’ built into the apartment that involved dozens of historical figures, a fictional book and a soundtrack.” It’s nice to have more money than you know what to do with, or so I’m told.

Variety reports that Spike Lee will take a break from feuding with Clint Eastwood long enough to direct The Time Traveler, adapted from “a memoir by Ronald Mallett, one of the nation's first African-Americans to earn a Ph.D in theoretical physics.” The book contains “the technical specs for what Mallett envisions as a workable time machine. Developing a time machine became an obsession for Mallett from the age of 10 after his father's death. His goal was to travel back in time to save his father.” Spike Lee’s goal is travel back in time to prevent himself from making She Hate Me.

Finally, those who are still experiencing Sopranos withdrawal a year later can take a break from those elaborate last episode theories with Son of Mourning, a “satirical indie comedy” that will co-star Lorraine “Dr. Melfi” Bracco and Jamie-Lynn “Meadow” Sigler. Per the Hollywood Reporter, “Bracco and Sigler will play the mother and love interest, respectively, of a disaffected ad copywriter (Joseph Cross). When he returns home to deal with his parents' divorce, the locals mistake him for a spiritual savior who will deliver them from the world's climate crisis.”

Attack of the Spoilers!

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:00:00 GMT

The big battle of the summer movie season is not Batman vs. Joker (spoiler: Batman wins) or Indiana Jones vs. whatever they are (spoiler: they’re aliens from another dimension. I think.), it’s the spoilerazzi vs. the spoiler Nazis. Entertainment Weekly comes at this most pressing issue of our time from a couple of different angles.

“Welcome to Spoiler Nation,” writes Jeff Jensen, “an irritating minority whose noisy, nosy engagement with Hollywood has deeply aggravated many of its most powerful players — and inspired many others to change the way they do business. How these leaks happen is no mystery. Spoilers have come from every corner of Hollywood, even from agents and studio execs themselves, motivated by the desire to promote an agenda or glean potential audience response.” Some spoiler sites self-flatteringly view themselves as industry watchdogs, making sure that studios aren’t taking undue liberties with their favorite franchise, serial arc or comic book character. Then there are filmmakers like J.J. Abrams who would prefer the hardcore spoiler geeks go get themselves lives, at least until his version of Star Trek comes out in 2009. "Learning raw detail and experiencing that detail as it was intended are two totally different things," he says. "I would argue that not knowing those details in advance is a more refreshing way to live when it comes to entertainment."

I agree that spoilers can be an unwelcome intrusion on the creative process as well as our enjoyment of said creation, but on the other side of the coin we find the spoiler Nazis – the miserable few who get all bent out of shape at your offhand mention that the planet of the apes was Earth all along. “Thanks a lot for ruining that 40-year-old movie I haven’t seen yet, dickweed!” Personally I can live without these people, although Ken Tucker goes a little too far in his “I spoil if I must!” manifesto: “When it comes to spoilers in reviews, I'm pretty hard-core: I don't care about 'em. Whether I'm writing a review or reading one, I don't want any held-back information to prevent that review from being the most interesting, thought-provoking one possible.” Leaving aside the question of when was the last time Tucker wrote the most interesting, thought-provoking review possible, I’ve got to take some issue with this. I’ve been writing movie reviews for nearly a decade now, and there are definitely some tricks of the trade – ways of writing about a movie’s secrets without coming right out and saying “Indiana Jones gets whacked by Tony Soprano!”

Oh, sorry. Did I ruin it?

Related:
Screengrab Rant: Indiana Jones in 2008
In Search of Spock's Insurance Form