Our Fall and Winter Preview 2010

Looking ahead to seven coming attractions in the coming weeks.

Every year about this time the movie industry starts rolling out their prestige pictures, the films they hope will gain them the acclaim and pursuant bragging rights that come from winning all the awards doled out around the first of the year (and helping them in the race to the Academy Awards, to boot.) The fall and winter seasons tends to cater to a more adult audience than the summer season, as well, with more fare for grown-ups taking their bows in multiplexes as well as the indie cinemas. Even the action films tend to offer more complex plots, with more mature stars.

The following seven films represent the coming attractions that caught our eye the most. There are dozens of more films premiering – and some look better than others, of course – but these are the ones we thought most worth ballyhooing.

Hereafter (opens wide release Oct 22.) – A triptych of stories dealing with death, the afterlife, and the meaning of both: a factory worker (Matt Damon) can reluctantly speak to the dead but has since abandoned the flashy media career that came with it; a television journalist (Cecile DeFrance) and her daughter are caught up in a cataclysmic tsunami; a young boy in London witnesses the death of his twin brother (George McLaren). All three stories converge at the end, as the characters unite.

The film opened in limited release last week, and response from the mainstream press has been uncharacteristically tepid compared to most of Clint Eastwood’s directing efforts.

The trailer reminds us, for no good reason, of last summer’s problematic Inception; we wonder how much this film’s debut played in Universal’s decision to push back The Adjustment Bureau, another reality-warping, Damon-starring melodrama, from September until next March.

Unstoppable (opens nationwide November 12) As an unmanned, half-mile long train loaded with combustible and poisonous materials threatens to destroy the city located in its path, a railroad engineer (Denzel Washington) and conductor (Chris Pine) race to intercept it and dismantle its engine.

The film marks Washington’s sixth collaboration with director Tony Scott; their last effort together, a remake of The Taking of Pelham 123, didn’t exactly set the world on fire in 2009. Nevertheless, Pine is an engaging and promising new talent and the concept is richer this time around, with far more water cooler potential. Too bad the poster looks like a direct-to-DVD jacket cover.

The plot is loosely based on a 2001 true story, though in reality the runaway train achieved speeds of only about 47 miles an hour. Crews slowed the train down to about eleven MPH, at which time a conductor jogged alongside, hopped aboard, and shut down the engines.

The Next Three Days (Opens nationwide November 19) – When his wife (Elizabeth Banks) is falsely imprisoned for murder, a college professor (Russell Crowe) plans her escape with help from a convict (Liam Neeson) who successfully staged his own jailbreak. Determined despite his inexperience, the professor goes through with the break-out even while his mistakes make the city close in around his family. Brian Dennehy, Olivia Wilde, and Daniel Stern co-star.

Directed by Paul Haggis (Crash), the film remakes the 2007 French festival hit Pour Elle. The American version moves the action to Pittsburgh, no doubt taking advantage of the city’s intricate layout and complex infrastructure.



The film seems intriguing for no apparent reason than it’s the kind of big-star attraction we keep wishing Hollywood would start making again (the vampires and super-heroes are getting old.) After years of less-than-satisyfing work, Crowe is overdue to lead something that shows his still-considerable everyman chops. Banks was seemingly in every movie released in 2008 but hasn’t worn out her welcome yet.

Casino Jack (Opens December 1) – Based on the true-life story of lobbyist Jack Abramoff (Kevin Spacey), who was convicted in 2006 for massive fraud, conspiracy, and tax evasion in a far-reaching investigation that also jailed a U.S. Congressman and nine other lobbyists and congressional staffers. A legend among lobbyists and influence peddlers, Abramoff spent millions on hotels, vacations, and other incentives in order to curry political favors on behalf of his clients.

Directed by George Hickenlooper, the film co-stars Barry Pepper, Jon Lovitz and Kelly Preston, though of course the focus is on Spacey in full-tilt megalomaniac mode as the flashy Abramoff. Hickenlooper’s 2001 effort The Man From Elysian Fields was a quiet triumph of intelligence and grace, though expect more bombast given the subject matter and.. well, just by Spacey’s participation, really.

The public gave a resounding “meh” in response to last summer’s similarly smart/caustic Middle Men, so who knows how they’ll embrace this one. And because you can’t make these things up, Abramoff will be released from prison just three days before the film’s release.

The Company Men (Opens nationwide December 10) – a drama taking aim at the Great Recession, this ensemble piece centers around an executive (Ben Affleck) forced to work construction for his brother-in-law after his six-figure salary corporate position is downsized; Tommy Lee Jones and Chris Cooper also appear as men on different rungs of the corporate ladder similarly affected by the new economic realities. 

Television producer John Wells (Southland, ER) directs his own script, which from the trailer below looks earnest possibly to a fault. Given the subject matter, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Some media outlets still list the film’s October 22 release date, even though a recent postponement moved its berth back to December 10. Sadly, the economy likely won’t be any better seven weeks from now, either.

Tron: Legacy (Opens nationwide December 17) – Though not by design a film for grown-ups, it’s pointless not to expect thirtysomething Gen X’ers to check out this long-awaited upgrade to one of the 80′s seminal films. Set in the present day, the son (Garrett Hedlund) of the world’s most brilliant game developer (Jeff Bridges) remains haunted by his father’s disappearance. Traveling to the abandoned Flynn’s Arcade, he enters a virtual world and joins his father on a quest to overthrow CLU 2, its despotic master control program.

Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner both reprise their roles from the 1982 Disney original, with Olivia Wilde and Michael Sheen appearing as new additions to the digital universe. Everything else is familiar to fans of the original but made new again by the intervening three decades of special effects innovation.

CGI maestro Joseph Kosinski makes his debut directing effort, but as with the original the characters and story are probably only half the fun. Props to Bridges and Boxleitner for coming back, too.

True Grit (Opens nationwide December 25) – Speaking of Bridges (we’re doing that a lot lately, it seems), he headlines the Coen Brothers’ remake of the 1969 John Wayne classic about a young girl (Hailee Steinfeld) who enlists an alcoholic marshal (Bridges) to find the outlaw who killed her father (Josh Brolin). Damon plays the Texas Ranger who accompanies them.

Wayne, probably no one’s idea of a great thespian, won the Best Actor statue for his performance in the original. This new version has Oscarbait written all over it, so expect nominations for Bridges (again) and likely for Steinfeld as well:

The Coens have for our money been in something of a slump over the last decade, with more misses (The Ladykillers, Burn After Reading) than bull’s-eyes thanks in part to a troubling mean streak that seems to grow with each successive film. On the other hand, their first effort with Bridges has become something of a cultural phenomenon, and their previous effort with Brolin did win Best Picture.

- Michael Kabel

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

DVD Review: Star Trek

Action-packed reboot of the beloved franchise boldly comes to DVD and Blu-Ray this week.

One of the biggest hits of last summer’s movie season – and a giant cause for relief among the franchise’s devoted fans – J.J. Abram’s (Lost, Mission: Impossible 3) re-energizing take on the Star Trek mythology arrives on DVD and Blu-Ray this week in a variety of single and multiple disc editions. It’s a hell of an action movie, and though explicit comparisons to rival franchise Star Wars aren’t entirely fair, this new Trek has the same sense of dizzying momentum. Maybe too much momentum, and possibly too much action for its own good.

The Star Trek TV series and films have never preoccupied themselves with stunts and pyrotechnics, often proudly wearing their cerebral ambitions on their form-fitting sleeves. While Abrams and company have jettisoned such a restrained attitude in favor of adventure, the new film’s bravado often sometimes drags it down or lets it skip over important plot clarification. Also noticeably missing is the Utopian optimism that, at its best, let the original series and its various children transcend their budgets as well as the usual pitfalls endemic to episodic science fiction.

The story’s basics are familiar but made vividly fresh by a crisp production design as well as Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman’s taut script. Centuries into the future, young James T. Kirk (Chris Pine, Bottle Shock) spends his childhood near the Iowa shipyards that construct massive starships used by the United Federation of Planets to bring stability to the galaxy. An orphan whose father died saving the U.S.S. Kelvin from an attack by the belligerent alien Romulans, young Kirk is recruited into Starfleet by veteran officer Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood, The Sweet Hereafter) on the strength of his natural aptitude and his father’s heroic legacy.

Jump ahead three years and Kirk has breezed through San Francisco’s Starfleet Academy, even rigging a no-win mission simulation test (which veteran Trek fans will recognize as the Kobayashi Maru from Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan) in his favor. A disciplinary hearing, spearheaded by Academy instructor Spock (Zachary Quinto), is interrupted by a distress signal from Spock’s home planet of Vulcan. With the rest of Starfleet’s armada preoccupied elsewhere, it’s up to the cadets to respond in seven brand new starships including the venerable U.S.S. Enterprise. The Romulan craft that destroyed the Kelvin has returned again, and with help from his friend “Bones” McCoy (Karl Urban, The Bourne Supremacy) Kirk stows away beneath Captain Pike’s notice to help out.

The action that follows includes time travel, black holes, the destruction of planets, parachuting from low-Earth orbit, and swashbuckling sword fights. It often seems as if frequent Abrams collaborators Orci and Kurtzman threw everything they could devise into the chain-of-set-pieces script, leaving no idea discarded. For the most part that damn-the-torpedoes strategy works. Other times, including a tedious man vs. monster chase sequence on an ice moon (itself too derivative by half of The Empire Strikes Back), all that action instead feels superfluous and distracting from the main story thread.

And it’s a very linear thread. One thing happens and then another, each sequence building on the one before rather than happening from circumstance. Abrams et. al. have a lot to accomplish in the film’s two hours, yet despite the diversions, repetitious stunts and sometimes glaring plot holes the story makes sense without seeming simplistic; it’s easy to see where everything might have dissolved into chaos instead. The stakes, thanks to the Romulan commander Nero (Eric Bana, Munich), are demonstrably high enough that the rapid pitch continuously seems justified. Add that to Kirk and company’s relative inexperience and you feel justified in believing the danger.

What’s missing most is backstory, and context. We are told that the Federation is a noble cause but not of its origins, or why Earth and other alien worlds remain devoted to its purpose. The time-travel elements are explained but not developed, so that depending on your familiarity with that trope’s mental contortions the ensuring plot details will seem opaque at best and frustrating at worst. Kirk’s childhood is given only the barest amount of explanation, likewise the motivations of bad guy Nero or the Romulans in general. Extant Trek continuity is apparently filled with details on almost all of the above (we’ve just scratched the surface ourselves), so there was no shortage of source material from which to draw. Maybe Abrams and company have deferred such embellishments until the already-announced sequel? Whatever the case, the story needed greater depth to bring the film’s setting into a completely coherent focus.

Luckily the cast is up to the script’s ambitious challenges. Pine, given the task of bringing the famously pre-politically correct Kirk to the modern age, finds his character not in the swagger but rather in the relentless self-confidence that made William Shatner’s Kirk legendary. Quinto, a talented actor not given much to do on Heroes anymore except beckon or arch his formidable eyebrows, builds Spock from barely restrained and (oddly enough) seething emotion. Urban is underused as the crusty Dr. McCoy, as is Simon Pegg (Hot Fuzz) as Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott. Playing the heavy, Bana makes the most of a perfunctory role. In origin movies like this it’s enough for the villain to simply be menacing, but thanks again to impeccable costuming and production design a large part of that work is already accomplished. Still, he makes the most of each line of dialogue allowed him.

Speaking of design, the new Enterprise vessel looks great most of the time. This latest interpretation of the classic shape is sleek and detailed, keeping the recognizable form while incorporating new elements including a dynamic new electrical effect to the warp nacelles. The bridge is a swirl of translucent display screens and fluorescent lights, selling the movie’s futuristic setting all by itself. Less impressive, unfortunately, are a generic-looking medical bay and an engineering section that’s exactly as anonymous as any petrochemical refinery. For such a classic and famous ship you’d expect a bold new vision of its engine room to be just as impressive and well-thought out. It’s something to consider as Abrams and his group boldly go into plans for the sequel.

- Michael Kabel

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

(Note: An earlier version of this review appeared for the film’s theatrical release.)

Five Good Books That Should Be Great Movies

Great novels that are due and overdue for a leap to the big screen.

Ignatius Reilly, the poster child for Development Hell

Books, as we’ve said before, are like movies that play in your head. Good books are movies you don’t mind watching over and over again on the screen in your mind. The film industry has appropriated all kinds of books virtually since its inception, taking material from the best fiction and nonfiction as well as from the lowest genre potboilers. There’s just no way of predicting how a book will translate: Hollywood has made masterpieces out of humble paperbacks but also made garbage of bona fide classics. Films and movies aren’t exactly alike, but they’re close enough in structure and pacing that it’s sometimes hard to believe filmmakers could screw up excellent source material. But they manage.

We were excited by recent news announcing that Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars novels are headed for filming soon, at last bringing two classics of science fiction into cinema. The following is five additional examples of worthy books we’d like to see on the screen, if only so that cinema’s much wider audience can take notice of their superb stories. Just for the sake of variety, we’ve tried to include samples of literature of many different styles and periods.

Life During Wartime, by Lucius Shepard (1987) Shepard’s Cold War thriller is part horror tale, part allegory and part military war epic, forming a mosaic of genres typical of his strange genius. Set amid a U.S.-led guerrilla war in Central America, the story follows infantryman David Mingolla as he joins an elite cadre of psychic tacticians but finds his fledgling abilities much much vaster than he realized, allowing him to bend reality to his will and challenge the other psychics manipulating world events. Suggested cast: We imagine Jeremy Renner (The Unusuals) playing Mingolla, with Vinessa Shaw (Two Lovers) as his adversary and kindred spirit Deborah. Imagine the film as: A cross between Scanners, Apocalypse Now, and The Matrix. Ideal director: David Cronenberg.

The Big Nowhere, by James Ellroy (1988) A homophobic sheriff’s deputy, a mafia thug and an anguished investigator desperately pursue a brutal serial killer through McCarthy-era Los Angeles while communists, gangsters and politicians jockey for power. The second and arguably the darkest of Ellroy’s “L.A. Quartet” cycle of novels, it’s similar in tone and structure to L.A. Confidential but even bleaker and more cynical. And its ending, for better or worse, is anything but “Hollywood.” Suggested cast: Ryan Gosling (Fracture) stars as the self-loathing Deputy Danny Upshaw, alongside Michael Hogan (Battlestar Galactica) as repentant enforcer Buzz Meeks and Dean Winters (Oz) as weary crusader Mal Considine. No one on Earth should be allowed to play the monumentally evil Dudley Smith except James Cromwell, who nailed the same role in L.A. Confidential. Imagine the film as: Chinatown, Body Double and Manhunter combined. Ideal director: James Gray.

Five Skies, by Ron Carlson (2007) Three men – a petty criminal, a recent widower, and a Hollywood construction foreman – work at building a stunt ramp beside a gorge in the Idaho wilderness, all so that a female stunt driver (think Danica Patrick) can jump the ravine on Pay Per View. The three men confront their past as the ramp slowly takes shape and form. Suggested cast: Damian Lewis (Life) stars as the guilt-ridden foreman Arthur Key, alongside Chris Pine (Star Trek) as thief Ronnie Panelli and Sam Elliott as the heartbroken Darwin Gallegos. Imagine the film as: The Wages of Fear and Tender Mercies merged with Days of Heaven. Ideal director: Terrence Malick.

The Good Soldier, by Ford Madox Ford  (1927) Easy to visualize as a costume drama with an edgy anger to it - an antidote to the huffing and puffing Oscarbait of recent years – Ford’s Victorian Era novel swirls around two married couples spending weeks together over twenty years at a German spa. The titular good soldier, Edward Ashburnham, is a perfect English gentleman except for his almost compulsive need to seduce women – including his friend’s wife. Long praised as an influential work both for its structure and style, the book was previously a 1981 telepic, so its time has easily come round again. Suggested cast: Liev Shreiber (Defiance) and Cate Blanchett (Bandits) play Ashburnham and his lover Florence Dowell; Robert Downey, Jr. costars as the cuckolded John Dowell alongside Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Dark Knight) as Leonora Ashurnham. Imagine the film as: A mix of Last Year At Marienbad, The Ice Storm, and The English Patient. Ideal director: Michael Winterbottom.

Night Train, by Martin Amis (1997) Amis’ critically-lauded 1997 fling with the hardboiled detective genre features an alcoholic, emotionally crippled police detective trying to solve the apparent suicide of a beautiful scientist with every reason to live. The investigation takes a turn for the darkly existential, and Amis twists conventions further by making the troubled detective a woman, too. The novel’s abrupt ending is like two fingers joliting out of the page, poking you in the eyes. Suggested cast: Laura Linney (Breach) plays the self-destructive Detective Mike Hoolihan, Amy Adams (Enchanted) plays the deceased Jennifer Rockwell, and Paul Schneider (Away We Go) co-stars as Rockwell’s lover and suspected killer Trader Faulkner. Imagine the film as: The Pledge, Prime Suspect and Laura compressed into a brainy whodunnit. Ideal director: John Dahl.

- Michael Kabel
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Review: Star Trek

J.J. Abrams’ re-imagining packs the final frontier with action. That’s not entirely a good thing.

After months of delays that only fueled the expectations of both old-school Trekkers and newcomers alike, J.J. Abram’s (Lost, Mission: Impossible 3) re-imagining and re-energizing take on the Star Trek franchise roared into theatres this weekend, taking in a franchise-record setting $74 million. Expect that number to grow quickly on the crest of great word of mouth: the film is a built-for-entertainment joyride that’s virtually wall-to-wall action. It’s a hell of an action movie, and though explicit comparisons to franchise rival Star Wars aren’t entirely accurate this new Trek has the same sense of dizzying momentum.

But that’s also it’s biggest problem. The Star Trek TV franchises and films have never been preoccupied with stunts and pyrotechnics, often proudly wearing their cerebral ambitions on their multi-colored sleeves. While Abrams and company have jettisoned such a restrained attitude in favor of adventure, the new film’s bravado often sometimes drags it down or lets it skip over important plot clarification. Also noticeably missing is the Utopian optimism that, at its best, let the original series and its various children transcend their budgets as well as the usual genre pitfalls.

The story’s basics are familiar but made vividly fresh. Centuries into the future, James T. Kirk (Chris Pine, Bottle Shock) spends his childhood in the shadows of the Iowa shipyards that construct massive starships used to patrol the galaxy. An orphan whose father died saving the U.S.S. Kelvin from an attack by the belligerent Romulans, young Kirk is recruited into Starfleet by veteran officer Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood, The Sweet Hereafter) on the strength of his natural aptitude and his father’s heroic legacy.

From left: Quinto, chair, Pine

Jump ahead three years and Kirk has breezed through San Francisco’s Starfleet Academy, even rigging a no-win mission simulation test (which veteran Trek fans will recognize as the Kobayashi Maru from Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan) in his favor. A disciplinary hearing, spearheaded by Academy instructor Spock (Zachary Quinto), is interrupted by a distress signal from Spock’s home planet of Vulcan. With the rest of Starfleet’s armada preoccupied elsewhere, it’s up to the Starfleet cadets to respond in seven brand new starships, including the venerable U.S.S. Enterprise. The Romulan craft that destroyed the Kelvin has returned again, and with help from his friend “Bones” McCoy (Karl Urban, The Bourne Supremacy) Kirk stows away beneath Captain Pike’s notice to help out.

The action that follows includes time travel, black holes, the destruction of planets, parachuting from low-Earth orbit, sword fights… it often seems as if frequent Abrams collaborators Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman threw everything they could devise into the chain-of-set-pieces script, leaving no idea discarded. Thanks to state of the art special effects and a production design that’s almost always nothing short of dazzling, for the most part that damn-the-torpedoes strategy works. Other times, including a tedious man vs. monster chase sequence on an ice moon (itself too derivative by half of The Empire Strikes Back), all that action instead feels superfluous and distracting from the main story thread.

Not Hoth. Not even Rura Penthe.

And it’s a very, very linear thread. One thing happens and then another, sequences building on the one before rather than happening from circumstance. Abrams et. al. have a lot to accomplish in the film’s two hours, yet despite the diversions, repetitious stunts and sometimes glaring holes the story makes sense without seeming simplistic; it’s easy to see where the plot might’ve dissolved into chaos instead. The stakes, thanks to the Romulan commander Nero (Eric Bana, Munich), are demonstrably high enough that the rapid pitch continuously seems justified. Add that to Kirk and company’s relative inexperience and you feel justified in believing the danger.

What’s missing most is backstory, and context. We are told that the Federation is a worthy cause but not of its origins, or why Earth and other alien races remain devoted to its purpose. The time-travel elements are explained but not developed, so that depending on your familiarity with that trope’s mental contortions the ensuring plot details will seem opaque at best and frustrating at worst. Kirk’s childhood is given only the barest amount of details, likewise the motivations of bad guy Nero or the Romulans in general. Extant Trek continuity is apparently filled with details on almost all of the above (we’ve just scratched the surface ourselves), so there was no shortage of source material from which to draw. Maybe Abrams and company have deferred such embellishments until the already-announced sequel? Whatever the case, the story needed greater depth to bring the film’s setting into a completely coherent focus.

Luckily the cast is up to the script’s ambitious challenges. Pine, given the task of bringing the famously pre-politically correct Kirk to the modern age, finds his character not in the swagger but rather in the relentless self-confidence that made William Shatner’s Kirk legendary. Quinto, a talented actor not given much to do on Heroes anymore except beckon or arch his formidable eyebrows, builds Spock from barely-restrained and seething… emotion. Urban is underused as the crusty Dr. McCoy, as is Simon Pegg (Hot Fuzz) as Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott. Playing the heavy, Bana makes the most of a perfunctory role. In origin movies like this it’s enough for the villain to simply be menacing, but thanks again to impeccable costuming and production design a large part of that work is already accomplished. Still, he makes the most of each line of dialogue allowed him.

They'll pick you up.

Speaking of design, the new Enterprise vessel looks great most of the time. This latest interpretation of the classic shape is sleek and detailed, keeping the recognizable form while incorporating new elements including a dynamic new electrical effect to the warp nacelles. The bridge is a swirl of translucent display screens and fluorescent lights, selling the movie’s futuristic setting all by itself.  Less impressive, unfortunately, are a generic-looking medical bay and an engineering section that looks as anonymous as any petrochemical refinery. For such a classic and famous ship you’d expect a bold new vision of its engine room to be just as impressive and well-thought out. It’s something to be considered as Abrams and his group boldly go into plans for the sequel, plans most likely underway even as you read this.

- Michael Kabel
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Star Trek: Great Trekspectations

Seven cool things about the Star Trek universe we hope to see in the new movie.

The long-awaited new “reboot” of the Star Trek franchise opens in just 30 days (Update: Read our review of the new film here) and the previews growing ever more pervasive on television and online have just begun to reveal the new film’s rollicking story. We expect that’ll continue up until its opening, but in the meantime – being somewhat neophyte Trekkers ourselves – we’ve come up with a list of people, places, and things we’d like to see shown or at least visually referenced. Each one, we think, could ramp up the cool factor even further.

The following list isn’t in any particular order, and we apologize in advance for any gaps in our knowledge. These are ideas and concepts we’ve come across over the years, and we’ve taken what we could from Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki, to fill in the blanks. Also, what’s below doesn’t necessarily include everything from the semi- and non-canonical expanded universe of Trek novels, video games, comic books, cartoons, and role playing games. We’ve barely dipped a toe into that ocean.

Romulan birds-of-prey in formation

The Battle of Cheron and the defeat of the Romulan Star Empire: The Romulans (like Mr. Spock’s Vulcans, but craftier and far more malicious) are the bad guys of the new film, but in Star Trek continuity Earth and its allies fought a long and mutually devastating war with their vast Star Empire a century before. Little is known about this conflict’s climactic battle except that the defeat was a humiliating loss for the Romulans and directly led to the formation of the Unied Federation of Planets.

If other franchises like Star Wars and Battlestar: Galactica have anything on Star Trek, it’s a well-known space battle. Showing such an event as a Midway-in-space-style slugfest would fix that once and for all.

Robert April, the Enterprise‘s “first” captain: When Gene Roddenberry wrote the first Star Trek treatment for MGM in 1964, the ship was called the Yorktown and was captained by Robert April, a part reportedly meant for Jack Lord or Lloyd Bridges, among others. Over the years a number of canonical and non-canonical sources have incorporated and fleshed out April’s character, establishing his British heritage and giving him a more militaristic bearing than his successors Christopher Pike (played in the new movie by Bruce Greenwood) and James T. Kirk (Chris Pine). Seeing this earliest of Star Trek creations, possibly in his later career as an ambassador, would make a great tribute to the mid-20th Century bravado of the original series.

The legacy of Star Trek: Enterprise: Probably the least-loved of the six series, Enterprise was nevertheless exciting and remarkably well-acted TV sci-fi. Especially in its second two seasons, when its storylines and tone took smarter but markedly darker turns, the prequel series offered multi-episode arcs that settled a lot of long-running fan debates while also fixing inconsistencies in the overarching Trek timeline and universe. And it managed all that while still remaining the most action-oriented Trek yet.

Honestly, we expect this black sheep of the Trek franchises to get short shrift in the movie, but it deserves some kind of acknowledgement for its efforts to explain the backstory of every series set after it.

Gary Mitchell, Captain Kirk’s best friend: The pilot to the original series featured helmsman (and possible First Officer) Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell, Kirk’s buddy from their days at Starfleet Academy and as wily an officer as Kirk himself. Driven mad from psychic powers gained on a world at the edge of known space, he attempted to kill Kirk and the Enterprise’s crew before meeting his own death at Kirk’s hands. Mitchell was played by Gary Lockwood, who two years later starred as the astronaut murdered by the HAL-9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

There’s no mention of  a Lockwood character in IMDB’s listing of the new film’s cast, which is kind of a shame. Introducing a character that died in the series’ first episode would have lent a grim in-joke to the crew’s “first” adventure, if indeed the new film works as a prequel to the 1960′s series.

Andorians, the warlike anti-Vulcans: Blue-skinned inhabitants of a frozen moon that orbits a ringed gas giant, Andorians are fiery-tempered warriors who pride themselves on letting emotions guide their decisions. The historical enemies of the dispassionate Vulcans (who live on a world of deserts and volcanoes), they were among Earth’s strongest allies in the war with the Romulans and then later a founding member of the Federation.

They’re also among the most prominent aliens in the Trek galaxy, appearing in all its three time periods. It almost wouldn’t be the same without one or two of them manning a station aboard the Enterprise or filling in the ranks at Starfleet Command. And speaking of cool alien races…

Caitians, the Federation’s cat-people: One of two feline-derived species in the expanded, non-canon universe, Caitians were also briefly glimpsed in the gallery shown at the end of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Various stories and sourcebooks published over the last two decades describe them, somewhat ironically, as a peaceful, vegetarian, and spiritual people who value loyalty above all else.

An interplanetary civilization like the Federation can’t have too many aliens interacting with humans. And cat-people are cool by definition.

A map of the Neutral Zone from the original series

The Neutral Zone, the no-man’s land between Federation and Romulan space: Part of the bitter peace created at the end of the Earth-Romulan War, the Neutral Zone was established as a no-fly zone between the two warring powers. That didn’t stop both sides from heavily fortifying their boundaries, with the new Federation building massive stellar fortresses out of hollowed-out asteroids towed into formation for that purpose.

Actually, of everything on this list we give the Neutral Zone the best odds of making an appearance. Not for nothing, but the Zone and the Romulan Star Empire were introduced in the episode ”Balance of Terror,” considered by many (including series creator Gene Roddenberry) to be among the best of the original series.

Star Trek opens nationwide May 7, with international release dates varying through that week.

- Michael Kabel

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Preview: Star Trek

Boldly going where plenty of other blogs are also going this week.

The trailer for J.J. Abrams’ $150 million reboot of the beloved, maligned Star Trek franchise debuted this past week, igniting lots of controversy but promising at least plenty of curiosity. Going on the two slam bang minutes of the trailer alone, we can already see lots of potential and maybe a couple of problems. (Update: read our review here.)

The original geek culture obsessoin, the Star Trek franchise – six televisions series, ten movies, innumerable novels – has a well-established continuity and canon that’s revered, to put it politely, by its tens of millions of fans. (Memory Alpha, the leviathan Trek wiki, is the gold standard to which all other fan wikis aspire.) Abrams and his fellow producers have avowed to keep as much of the original TV series’ continuity as possible (though they’ve apparently already written out Kirk’s best friend) while making the basic premise more contemporary. That seems like a good thing and a bad thing. Probably no ”trekker” is interested in seeing a sexier Enterprise crew flit about in a generic space-opera adventure. On the other hand, and to be bluntly honest, a lot of the original 1960s series looks dated as all hell when viewed today. The film will have to strike that fine balance to really please longtime fans while bring in new ones. To speculate wildly, it looks to do just that… but only barely.

The film’s story circles around the earliest days of the starship Enterprise, when it was still under the command of Captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood, The Sweet Hereafter). Starships are under attack by a Romulan aggressor named Nero (Eric Bana, Munich), including the ship commanded by James T. Kirk’s (Chris Pine, Bottle Shock) father. Kirk, a lifetime discipline case, is at Starfleet Academy but wants to get out and fight as soon as possible. The Enterprise,  with Kirk stowed away, races to stop Nero.

In the continuity of the television series, the Romulan Star Empire (like the Klingons, but smarter and based on the Roman Empire) fought a long and mutually devastating war with Earth, a war that ultimately led to an uneasy peace and the founding of the United Federation of Planets. Unlike the Klingons, the Romulans never really show their soft, honorable center or come around to being good guys after all. They’re are bent on continuous Imperial expansion, including Earth and its allies, such as Spock’s home planet of Vulcan. Basically, they’re the worst kind of scary adversaries, more so than the Klingons for their intelligence and guile. (Read our recent feature Great Trekspectations for a more in-depth explanation of the war.)

The trailer looks to get that spirit of a Federation just asserting itself, and of a glittering 23rd Century, even if the use of antique sportscars and gratuitous flashes of lingerie look, well, stupid. In fact the trailer’s whole prelude, with a prebuscent Kirk slo-diving out of a convertible, seems a little ridiculous. We’re also not sure showing the Enterprise getting built on Earth is a smart idea. We understand Abrams’ point that the movie has to get grounded on Earth before heading off into space, but the ship looks weird and awkward half-built in a field. Besides which, the unveiling of each new Enterprise in spacedock is sort of a Trek tradition, and ignoring it means turning the film’s back on many a fan’s warm memories.

On a brighter level, while Pine is still something of an unknown commodity some of the other casting is nothing short of inspired. Zachary Quinto (Heroes) looks born to play Spock, and Greenwood is an excellent choice to play the doomed Captain Pike, a role played on the TV series by Jeffrey Hunter (The Searchers). Simon Pegg as Scotty and Karl Urban as Bones McCoy have reportedly built their performances as tribute to, respectively, James Doohan and DeForest Kelley. Bana has never really gotten the attention he deserves, but Abrams and co-producer Damon Lindelof love their villains – look how Lost has turned into The Aventures of Ben Linus, Super Genius - so Nero’s character almost certainly won’t suffer for depth or screen time. And of course, Leonard Nemoy will return in a time-travel sequence, though The Shat has sadly opted not to participate.

So, the trailer. It’s a little too action-packed, maybe, but that’s what early teaser trailers are supposed to be. In particular, watch for the images of the Enterprise corridors, which look gorgeously futuristic, and listen for Pegg’s Scottish cadences. They’re the parts that will relieve old-school Trek fans while possibly exciting newcomers to the franchise. The film opens May 8, 2009.

- Michael Kabel

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Review: Bottle Shock

Our wine metaphor-free critique. Really, not even one!

Bottle Shock is loosely based on a charming true story and features a handsome ensemble cast and enough honey sunlight-soaked cinematography to fill three coffee table books. A film for the after-dinner crowd and anyone who can’t get enough 1970s nostalgia, it’s a light diversion that wants to make you smile, if not think, more than it aims to make you laugh out loud. Except for several times when the film becomes so lightweight it almost floats away, that’s not a problem. But the cast and the “so inspiring it could only happen in real life” true story just manage to keep it grounded on a rambling path.

That the story’s timing couldn’t be better is the stuff of cinema and, to a lesser degree, legend. In 1976, as America celebrated its bicentennial, two California-produced wines outscored their French counterparts in a blind taste test in Paris. The all-French judges were shocked, and rightly so: the event crashed the gate of French wine supremacy, opening the world wine market to vintages from America and later the world.

The film’s freewheeling structure is part of its charm but doesn’t help to tell a cohesive story. Stephen Spurrier (Alan Rickman), a British wine merchant and head of the not-especially-prestigious Academy of Wine in Paris, gathered several wines from California’s Napa Valley wineries. Included in the American expeditionary force was a chardonnay produced by the struggling Chateau Montelena, run by the father and son team of Jim (Bill Pullman) and Bo (Chris Pine) Barrett. Jim is a perfectionist on the edge of financial ruin; Bo is a stoned surfer ambivalent about his life’s direction, in stereotypically stoned-surfer fashion. The two are so shut off from one another they argue by boxing. As Spurrier tours the Valley in a rented Gremlin and rumpled British dignity (is any other kind tolerable?), the Barretts work at keeping the Chateau afloat with help from sexy, superfluous, fictitious intern Sam (Rachael Taylor) and Mexican-American wine expert Gustavo (Freddy Rodriguez), who’s secretly making his own vintage.

That’s a lot going on for an hour and forty minute runtime. Several of the episodes have a dragged out feel, while others, particularly those built around Pine, often stall out. The first third of the film plays especially formless, with scenes jumping back and forth between Napa and Paris. The Paris episodes are actually more entertaining, as Spurrier and his American friend Maurice (Dennis Farina, wearing suits seemingly inspired from every unfortunate wallpaper pattern of the era) run around trying to put the blind testing together. Meanwhile, Bo, Sam, and Gustavo have fun in the sun while filling out the sides of a romantic triangle that never fills out in depth.

The story of American underdogs triumphing is a perennial film subject, usually involving some kind of sport or intellectual event. Audiences not already vested in the brotherhood of the grape can be forgiven for not understanding the stakes of the Parisian wine tasting or why for the American wine makers economic ruin was always just a few bad barrels away. The film explains, if not actually shows, why the testing results were so momentous to both France and America. Director Randall Miller seems at a loss how to juggle everything, but often has the good sense to get out of the camera’s way and just film the gorgeous Napa scenery. Miller was certainly paying attention when he watched Days of Heaven, though the effect is no less pleasing to the eye for being derivative.

The performances are worth savoring. Rickman is a joy to watch, all embarassed poise and squinty panic. Pullman, older and paunchier now than during his 90s just-this-close-to-major-stardom prime, gives a perfectly tuned, multi-dimensional performance that deserves award recognition. Pine, not entirely as engaging as he thinks he is behind a Dude Lebowski mop of hair and runaway grin, grows into his part as the film progresses. Taylor and Rodriguez, while cramped for screen time, make their impressions well enough. Farina is Farina: you either get his smartass energy by now, or you don’t.

Comparisons to Sideways seem inevitable. That film understood wine as a metaphor for aging gracefully and held grape farming as symbolic of life’s nothing-is-guaranteed struggle. Bottle Shock would rather move all over the place to tell a story, or better yet a collage of stories, for the sake of entertainment. If nothing else, its depiction of the idyllic rustic splendor of Carter-era Napa Valley makes a good bookend to Sideway‘s teeth-grinding display of modern weekend getaway motels and cheesy souvenir shop oenophilia. As a result, how you feel about Bottle Shock may reflect your own standards in wine and winemaking. See it in the theatres after a good meal, or wait for the DVD and open a bottle of whatever good stuff you keep for yourself.

- Michael Kabel
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Dog Day Afternoons At the Cineplex

As the Summer of Superheroes winds down, we look at what’s still to arrive in theatres.

Studios are almost certainly looking ahead to Christmas already, when they can reap in profits all over again as Iron Man, Indiana Jones, and The Dark Knight make their DVD and Blu-Ray debuts. But that’s a long way off, and in the meantime we have the traditional August scrap heap of new releases to wade through.

Conventional studio wisdom is that, as people go on vacations and resign themselves to another year of school, movie theatre attendance diminishes. (Time was, they used to dump their worst movies into theatres at Thanksgiving – hence the term “turkey” to refer to a box office failure.) So, the end of summer is the time when you see fading stars, risky box office propositions, and films that otherwise carry little studio confidence.

It’s still possible, of course, that some films will surprise the critics and public alike. But with scant few exceptions the major studio offerings look middling at best and dreadful at worst. The month got off to a pitch-perfect start last week, when the thoroughly unnecessary sequel The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor failed to dislodge Batman from his penthouse atop the box office receipts. The rest of the new releases don’t look any more promising.

Hell Ride: Hollywood, look: Pulp Fiction was fourteen years ago. Tarantino isn’t the auteur or box office guarantee we all expected him to become, and his love for trash-for-trash’s-sake cinema has long ago become schtick. His executive producing this big-budget B-movie by Larry Bishop (who made two decent neo-noirs in the 90s, Underworld and the charmingly weird Mad Dog Time) seems just more of the same product as his giant flop Grindhouse. Admittedly, there’s a market for this kind of raunchy diversion, in a sweaty-palmed retro boutique sort of way. But Hell Ride, about a war betwen biker gangs or some such drivel, already has an October release date for its inevitable “Unrated Director’s Edition” DVD. If you can’t wait that long… actually yeah, you can wait. Limited release Aug 8.

Sleazy Riders: Madsen, Bishop, Balfour

Pineapple Express: Judd Apatow and company have been on a winning streak for so long now that it’s almost become suspenseful waiting for the backlash. Maybe this stoner comedy/murder mystery will be the tipping point; maybe it won’t. On the plus side, there’s Apatow’s Midas touch, a cast full of comedy ringers, and that Seth Rogen’s charm hasn’t quite worn off yet. On the down side, the story looks off-puttingly self-congratulatory, and Harold and Kumar have kind of locked down the stoner bud movie niche. Wide release Aug 08

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2: A nice reward for surviving the first week of school, it’s the same kind of harmless crowd pleaser as Mamma Mia, and its four comely stars amount to a Murderer’s Row of chick-TV inegnues. The audience’s parents will pick them up at the mall exit near the Bojangles after the film. Wide release August 8.

Bottle Shock: Hey, remember Sideways? Consider this a second glass. The comparisons seem inevitable in this indie about a small California vineyard in 1976 that enters a blind tasting competition, hoping to upset the usual French winners. Director Randall Miller might be the next indie darling after the film’s warm reception at Sundance and thanks to an ensemble cast that includes Alan Rickman, Bill Pullman, Dennis Farina, Eliza Dushku and Freddy Rodriguez. Limited release Aug 6.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Taking place between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, this new installment further develops Anakin Skywalker’s travel to the Dark Side of the Force. It’s probably going to be a nice treat for the Star Wars fans who liked the prequels but wished they were made in unsightly, awkard computer animation instead. Is it a bad sign that neither Hayden Christensen nor Ewan McGregor lend their voices to their animated counterparts? Christopher Lee and Samuel L. Jackson apparently found the time, however. The action figures are already in place at Target and Wal-Mart. Wide release Aug 15.

Tropic Thunder: Could anyone five years ago have predicted that Robert Downey, Jr. would bring more goodwill to a comedy than Ben Stiller or Jack Black? This high-concept adventure about movie stars lost in a jungle without a clue may represent a last chance for fading stars Stiller and Black, both of whom have seen their film cred wane after too many paycheck roles. Stiller directs, but he also directed his 2001 hit Zoolander, and if Pineapple Express doesn’t resonate with audiences this might be the hit he could use after the execrable The Heartbreak Kid. Wide release Aug 13.

Days of Thunder: Stiller, Black, Downey, Jr.

Death Race: Putting B-movie meat rack Jason Statham into an “update” of the 70s cult classic Death Race 2000 seems so obvious it’s sort of surprising they haven’t done it already. Basically, this new version  of the titular cross-country race is The Running Man crossed with NASCAR. Joan Allen and Ian McShane also appear and should know better. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, who’s responsible for the Resident Evil films. Wide release Aug 22.

Traitor: An FBI agent (Guy Pearce) investigates a former special ops agent (Don Cheadle) who may be working for terrorist organizations – or is he? We never seem to see enough of either Pearce or Cheadle, and the Bourne Identity meets Syriana plot contortions have us intrigued. Wide release August 29.

- Michael Kabel

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::