The Star Trek Movies: An Undertaking, Part 1 (Essay)

Star Trek: the final nerd frontier. These are the-okay enough of that, you can see where this is going.

Yes, Star Trek. That quintessential nerd franchise. When most people imagine a stereotypical nerd, I’m betting a short, stout, bespectacled figure dressed in a puke green uniform standing in line with others much like him waiting for an autograph from the guy who stood third from the right in that one shot from that one episode he wasn’t even alive to see in its original run. I am not one of these people. Yes, when I was younger I enjoyed “The Next Generation” a great deal, and it probably had something to do with Generations being released when I was ten. But I’m not a Trekkie by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve only ever seen one episode of the original series. Which is why I’m not talking about the series, I’ll be talking about the movies. Specifically the movies based on the original series. That is, the first through the sixth and the eleventh, which was released in May this year. This will be an outsider’s perspective. I don’t pretend to know everything about them. After all, I’ve never seen the series upon which they were based. Nor have I read the books about the lore or studied the blueprints of the ships. I’ve seen the movies. Things were revealed to me I didn’t previously know and I’d like to discuss it. So let’s boldly go where many many many have gone before shall we?

Up in the Air and Jason Reitman (Essay)

NOTE: This is an article I wrote for my college newspaper after talking with Jason Reitman at the Grand Hotel in Minneapolis a few weeks back. Further, less formal/cohesive posts will soon follow detailing other things that came up in the interview I found interesting. My review of Up in the Air is also forthcoming.

For someone who makes films for a living, it might sound disconcerting that Jason Reitman finds no answers in the language of the big screen—only questions.

“I don't think there are answers,” Reitman said, his knack for philosophical discussion as apparent as it is in his films. “The only thing I'm fairly confident in is that life is infinitely complicated.”

Coming off of the success of cult comedy Thank You For Smoking and international film sweetheart Juno, Reitman's new picture, Up in the Air, which he both wrote and directed, aims to pose equally challenging questions about love, home, belonging and self in a similarly entertaining, non-aggressive, comical manner.

A story about a man who travels two-thirds of the year for his career, played by George Clooney, Up in the Air is as personal a film to Reitman as it could get.

“I really cherish my time in the air,” he said after rattling off more than two-dozen cities he's traveled to in promotion of the film.

Starting as a commercial director and transitioning into feature productions, he said he's always been accustomed to traveling, and that the detached, stringless lifestyle represented by the main character is something he can very much relate to.

Based off of a novel of the same name by Walter Kirn, Up in the Air is an adaptation that Reitman tried to keep as close to the original as the new medium would allow, taking into account the differences between the two.

The Fourth Kind (Review)

I admit it: I fell for The Fourth Kind, hook, line and sinker. If you know nothing about it and have any desire to see The Fourth Kind, stop reading and do so, or suffer a meaningless, giggle-inducing 98 minutes.

Written and directed by film-industry newcomer Olatunde Osunsanmi, The Fourth Kind is a sloppy, over-the-top sci-fi thriller only forgivable when viewers go blind to the hoax it revolves around. In this way it is a peculiar film, defined almost entirely by viewer knowledge of its subject matter, which, when minimal, yields an enthralling and terrifying experience, but, when sufficient, turns shrieks into laughter and gaping mouths of disbelief into gaping mouths in service to a yawn.

The film poses as a dramatization of actual case studies backed by real video footage and audio recordings, many of which are shown throughout. This is the hook.

As the film begins, actress Milla Jovovich speaks directly to the audience outing herself as a performer in the film, and purports to be playing a character based on a real woman, Dr. Abbey Tyler, who is also featured via a filmed interview intermittently. This is the line.

The Box (Review)

The year is 1976, an innocent age in which an unmarked package is nothing to worry about, and half of Frank Langella walks around being mysterious. It's a time when conspiracy lurks around every corner, when no one can be trusted; it's the time a terrible movie occupies. It's The Box.

Adapted from a short story by Richard Matheson (I Am Legend), The Box is a science fiction, fantasy, mystery, thriller, conspiracy, romance, horror film with so many plot points and references that it caves in on itself, revealing in its wake the dusty remains of Cameron Diaz trying to act sincere.

When couple Norma and Arthur Lewis (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden) are visited by the deformed Arlington Steward (Frank Langella) who offers them cold hard cash in return for the couple's cooperation in killing an unknown person, a series of off-the-wall events involving hypnotic, somnabulant peeping-Toms, government cover-ups and other-worldly magical nonsense are set off.

Michael Jackson's This Is It (Review)

It's not enough to say Michael Jackson was eccentric. Michael Jackson, at least in his later years, was a caricature of himself, a part he perpetuates even in death in Michael Jackson's This Is It.

This Is It was previously going to be Jackson's final tour, a production that would match Jackson's life in size and scope, sparing no expense in creating a memorable farewell to music for the man that practically invented it. After Jackson's untimely death, however, the superstar's concert co-director, Kenny Ortega, was left with a massive pool of unused talent and effort and hours of stock rehearsal interviews and footage. Thus was born This Is It, a documentary meets musical that is more a tribute film than anything else.

Ortega is a middle-aged Jackson fan-boy who kisses the ground MJ walks on throughout the film. In many scenes, Ortega gushes over the musical icon while treating him like a child at the same time, an attitude that is oddly fitting when dealing with the Peter Pan wannabe.