Star Trek: The Tour

I've got a new Flickr photoset up; it's got all of the photos I took this past Saturday during my visit to Star Trek: The Tour.

This was something that regular readers will remember I brought up in December; as a lifelong Star Trek fan, I couldn't pass this up. Lucky for me, Josh at work is an equal (or greater?) Trek geek, so I knew I could count on him for company.

Josh and I managed to convince our girlfriends to come to Long Beach with us while we engaged in geekery of the highest order. Lots of costumes, faux-sets, and props were scattered throughout. Some nice information displays... but with the advent of the Interwebs, and sites like Memory Alpha, the "Timeline of the Future" is less impressive. The myriad TV screens through the "tour" had pretty cool behind-the-scenes pieces, based on B-roll and interviews with various designers and craftsmen. A DVD is available with all of these specials, and Josh and I both liked them quite a bit. We agreed that we could have done better, of course, but hey, what can you do.

The annoying thing was the manner of display for these videos. The screens were predominantly HD 16x9 monitors... but the content was SD 4x3 letterboxed material. There is a way to set up HDTVS to display this footage correctly: either "4x3 mode" to "pillarbox" the content with black bars on the sides, or "Zoom Mode" to zoom in and crop off the letterbox bars to fill the screen.

Star Trek: The Tour did neither, but stretched the material, distorting the image to fill the screen. This is one of my pet peeves, check it out:

Squashed!

Aside from bad video formatting, I enjoyed the exhibit. It didn't blow me away, but it offered a unique experience, being able to see so many actual costumes up close. I tell you, Khan's corset/shirt looks soft and comfortable in person, like a velvet sweatshirt.

It's safe to say we all had a damn good time... Michelle and Tracy were excellent sports, and we're all glad we went.

Check out the photos if you dare, but be warned: there are a lot of them.

New Site Element

Some of you may have noticed a new feature here at the Wicked Good Blog— posts now bear my signature.

I started working on this before the holidays, filling a few pieces of paper with numerous signatures, and scanning them in at a ridiculously high resolution. It took a while to pick one I liked, and build the alpha channels, etc, but I'm pretty happy with it, overall.

One of the things I wanted to iron out, but couldn't, was having it be automatically added to all posts; unfortunately, he Blogger template doesn't have easy access to the "post" layout, and I can't find the correct placement point. When this blog gets updated and moved, hopefully not too long from now, I'll have a new template, with a host of things I've wanted for some time, and this signature a default part of the post.

Until then, I'm inserting an HTML link at the end of each entry. Perhaps the least-elegant solution, but it's doing what I want it to, so I guess that's something. In the end, I just want to take ownership of what I post, and I like the "analog" feel of signing my work.

Guillermo & Bilbo?

This has been rumored before, but the Hollywood Reporter is, ah, reporting that Guillermo Del Toro is "in talks" to pick up the two film adaptations of The Hobbit, with Peter Jackson producing as previously announced.

I'm a traditionalist on this one, and would really like PJ himself to direct these. But as a much wiser man once said, sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes...

Del Toro is a solid second choice. He can do fantasy, and he's solid with other worlds (and looking to get even better). His visual style is similar to Jackson's, and I think their aesthetics will mesh quite nicely.

What Del Toro hasn't done yet is any kind of epic; most of his films are small and intimate, even in the face of larger events. Hellboy suffered for this; the character work was excellent, but the plot that drove the film never quite gelled, leaving the film a strange mix of end-of-the-world machinations, quirky conversations, and wonderful and emotional characters.

Of course, the said could be (and was!) said of PJ prior to the release of Fellowship, as all of his work up to then was small and personal, with no large scale epics under his belt.

And that worked out okay.

At the end of the day, one of the strengths of Jackson's Lord of the Rings is how well he combines the epic and the intimate; we care about the larger goals, we understand the importance of the battles, but we also care about characters, and feel the personal motivations between them. That's the nature of the book, and the films needed a deft hand to handle the varying scales of the story.

While The Hobbit is a smaller-scale book, the films being planned are anything but; if they're truly doing two, and adding in material from The History of Middle Earth, they'll be upping the ante with the White Council and the rise of Sauron. Because the book isn't set up to balance intimate with epic, the director is going to have to work extra hard to synthesize these elements. Done right, this could be incredible.

Del Toro has to step up on this one. This is important. And I'm betting he hits it out of the park.

Harry at Ain't It Cool is reporting on this as well, with the mandatory personal-experience-as-an-insider story. Oh well. And he brings up a great idea: Ron Pearlman as Smaug!

Could definitely happen. He could also be Beorn, the bear-man. Either way, he will rock. It is safe to say he will be in the film, looking at Del Toro's recent English-language films.

There are plenty of stunt-castable actors I'd love to see (Clive Owen as Bard, anyone?), but I'm hoping that Guillermo, like PJ, can stray from the beaten path. Had Lord of the Rings been cast the way fans talked, Sean Connery would be Gandalf, Harrison Ford would be Aragorn, and Haley Joel Osment would be Frodo. Or something like that. I want to be surprised by this; I'd never even heard of some dude named Viggo Mortenson, and that was perfect.

Some quick research brings up another fantasy list of actors for the many roles; some of it is obvious (Hey, Clive Owen as Bard!), but some of it is great conjecture. Martin Freeman as Bilbo? Damn he should be a hobbit, as much as I'd love to figure out some way to get Ian Holm back in the role. Stephen Fry as a dwarf is also spot-on. But for even mentioning Shia LeBoeuf, this guy should have his fingers broken.

Personally? Pearlman would be a fantastic Smaug, but... what about Ian McShane? The Golden Compass could be a problem there, but c'mon.

How about you guys? Any guess/wishes/hopes/dreams on casting for The Hobbit?

Good Points On Blogging

I've spent the last few weeks expanding the number of blogs I read, because (A) I like to, (B) Tech and design blogs interest me, (C) some of these guys link back and forth among each other so much, it's like I'm stuck in an old-fashioned webring, and lastly, (D) it's good research for getting better at writing myself.

Anyway, in the last day or two, a few of these newer blogs have posted about, you guessed it, posting.

From Shawn Blanc:

We have to remember not to confuse topic with content. What you write about is much more important than how you write about it.

From Seth Godin:

If you're writing online, forget everything you were tortured by in high school English class. You're not trying to win any awards or get an A.

Amen! Although, no one ever complained when content and style were both great.

Oh wait, nevermind.

But I do think this is good advice; focus on what you say over how you say it. This is true not only of writing, but of the CSS and HTML design of your site, the plating of your meals, the quality of your video: if the content is great, people won't care.

I still believe that style and quality are important; as often as not, form is function, or close enough to be indistinguishable. And I like good writing, probably more than the next guy.

But I try not to let my own lack of skill and refinement stop me from posting. Besides, how am I supposed to get better? Just reading won't do it...

A Guide For New Parents

Ever wonder what is and is not okay to do with babies?

Well, here's your answer.

Is It Christmas?

Get ready for Christmas by checking on its status.

Brilliant.

Leopard Agreement

Remember my original thoughts on Leopard, and how I thought the inactive window coloring was the opposite of how it should be?

I'm proud to say that I'm not alone, and this guy is smart enough to create some Photoshop examples as for why our alternate idea is better.

In the comments, someone points out that Apple already implements darkening effects when you invoke Dashboard or Exposé, so maybe they'll "see the light" on this one, too.

And, at Geek & Mild, we have another concept, whose capability is built in to Leopard's Core Image protocol: using depth of field.

[c/o Geek & Mild]

Rain in L.A.

It's raining so hard, it woke me up. Water is being blown through our impossible to seal windows. It's a storm.

I feel like I should be running around the roof of the Bradbury building, maybe while naked.

Or go downtown and order chinese food from a street vendor, insisting on four servings, not just two.

Carry an umbrella with a glowing neon handle.

Or maybe I should play hooky and watch Blade Runner here at home, and watch Harrison Ford do all these things.

Sigh.

Dream of Destruction

I had a dream last night that I broke my iPhone. Dropped it some distance onto something hard, and had it break right in half, if not quite severed. Imagine that it had a hinge in the middle of the touchscreen; that's exactly the state it was in.

Waking up, I was happy to discover that this had not, in fact, happened.

What kind of random-but-seemingly-real dreams had you had?

Heath Ledger Is Dead [updated]

Terrible news.

Ledger is —was— one of my favorite actors of my generation. He almost always did good work, and made things interesting, even in films that otherwise didn't deserve a second look. His performance as the Joker is high on my list of anticipated roles for 2008, and one I championed from the start.

A tragic loss of life, art, and talent. A sad day all around.

My deepest sympathies to his family and friends on this terrible day.



[UPDATE]

I wanted to add a link to Ledger's IMDb page; there are several films worth checking out. 1999's 10 Things was one of the first DVDs I bought, and still cracks me up; that same year, Two Hands slipped by unnoticed, but is pretty wacky. And I always dug A Knight's Tale, despite the weak ending.

I miss his potential already.

Welcome, Will!

Welcome to the world of blogging, Will Gong!

You'll see a link to his new blog, "Passages: The Will Gong Journal," on my "Blogroll & Friends" list. Check him out; he's one of the funniest guys I know.

And speaking of funny guys, I'd love to see Sherman set up a blog...

Star Trek Tease

Hell of a teaser.

I like it... but it didn't awe me quite the way I wanted it to.

Some backstory: I know a lot of people who give J.J. Abrams' Mission: Impossible III shit for being "too television." Too many medium shots, not enough camera movement, a constrained sense of space. I felt it was plenty cinematic, and had they not known a TV vet was directing, I think a lot of these complaints would've evaporated. Yes, the scene where Tom Cruise slides down a diagonal roof was horribly shot and did, in fact, feel like an extra-crappy "Alias" stunt, but besides that, J.J. did pretty damn well, in my opinion.

This teaser, though, starts to wake those fears in my own heart. Aurally, this glimpse at the coming Christmas' tentpole is epic and huge; NASA controllers counting down, JFK proclaiming a nation's resolve to head into space, Leonard Nemoy giving his farewell-ish rendition of the classic "space, the final frontier" from The Wrath of Khan. The audio does a better job of creating the myth of Starfleet than the opening titles of "Enterprise,"which went for a similar effect. But visually... it feels pretty constrained. No sense of space, in any meaning of the word. The briefest hint of scale and legend in the final two shots, where the warp nacelles edge into view.

On the whole, it feels pretty TV.

I dig the style, the grit. The orange and blue color scheme, washed and blown out at times. The human hands and faces building an epic ship with an epic destiny. It's close, it's personal, it's filthy. A lot of these shots could have been filmed over at BIW. I like the design of the Enterprise herself, the moving turbines in the nacelles, perhaps to be covered by the familiar orange domes. It feels like a real machine, and a human one at that.

Yet the trailer itself never achieves grand or epic; it relies completely on reputation for that, using the cred of the name "Enterprise," the familiar "Dum da-dum, da-dum dum da-dum..." and Leonard Nemoy's voice to substitute for any real presence. That isn't a death blow for the movie; it doesn't mean I think or fear it'll end up a sucky retread of some of my favorite films. But it does leave me with an underwhelming trailer that I sure do like a lot, despite that fact that it doesn't inspire me for a second.

This teaser satisfies, when it should have excited. I had hoped for more... scope. Give me a wide angle or two, give the camera more than a straight vertical gib move up, dissolve into one more shot, with the camera place back a few orders of magnitude. Let us feel the Enterprise, not just see it.

Hopefully, when the next round of teasing hits, we'll see something more cinematic to get my blood flowing. I don't mean plot or story points, dialogue, explosions, or even any shots of the cast at all. I want scale, I want space, and I want scope.

Incidentally, the writers should be crucified for re-locating the construction of the Enterprise to the Earth's surface. Not because it breaks canon, but because it's stupid. Any ship design with distinct structures bearing heavy mass while being flimsily connected, at a size like that, wouldn't be able to survive liftoff through an atmosphere. Build pieces on-planet, and assemble them in space? Absolutely. But launch the thing from Canaveral, or some future equivalent (probably in San Francisco)? Under no circumstances whatsoever.

Oh well, we can't win 'em all. In the end, all that matters is the movie, so if J.J. focuses his efforts on that over the trailer, he gets my vote. For, uh, whatever it is he's running for.

Axium Screws Hollywood

This story is a few weeks old now, but the newest trouble in Los Angeles has been Axium's bankruptcy; a lot of companies out here, including the one I work for and several of the studios, use Axium for payroll services. They just killed a lot of paychecks; add that to lower wage workers who may be feeling the pinch from the strike, and you have one hell of a mess.

I don't know how ubiquitous Axium is; do parts of the country other than California use them? The newest concern, as tax season draws near, is that they won't be issuing W-2s, so now we have to use our final pay stubs to pay our taxes. Joy, because getting audited sounds like a blast.

Defamer has a fun list of articles detailing the Axium meltdown; they're sorted in reverse-chronological order.

Every Weekend Should Be Three Days

Seriously. Someone give me a single good reason otherwise.

Of Arclight, Spaceships, Monsters, and HD-DVD

I saw Cloverfield this evening with Will and Holland... and it's one hell of a movie. I really liked it, it has certainly resonated with me... look for my extended look sometime tomorrow.

But there was one major disappointment; the new Star Trek teaser was supposed to screen before the film, as J.J. Abrams produced Cloverfield and is directing Star Trek, and companies Bad Robot and Paramount made both. But, for whatever reason, the Arclight Sherman Oaks decided to be the only theater I've heard to not show the teaser.

Those of you who have known me for a while are sure to know the depths of my Trek fandom. The technical manuals, Omnipedia CD-ROM, movies, soundtracks, bootlegged VHS of the TV shows. I'm a wicked fan. Hell, I had a half-birthday type party for the December release of Star Trek VI. So, between that, and my respect for J.J. Abrams' many projects, it's safe to say I'm excited for the Star Trek reboot.

And they didn't show us the goddamn trailer.

There's a YouTube version out there, which I refuse to look at; I want to see this for real. My hope is that, tomorrow, they release it at the official movie website (which looks pretty neat, by-the-by) in QuickTime HD, so I can kick the file to my AppleTV and watch it on my television. It won't be the same as seeing it in an Arclight theater, but it's better than nothing.

Also, on the topic of things that annoy me, the Stardust HD-DVD menu sucks hard. Unimaginative, boring, and repetitive, it's the antithesis of the film itself. In 1998, I could understand bad DVD menus; ten years later, I expect a much better effort.

But on the plus side, I got to see a trailer for the aforementioned horror film The Ruins, directed by Bowdoinham's own Carter Smith. That was cool.

YouTube, We Have A Problem [Updated]

At the time of this writing, it looks like YouTube is down for the count. Google Video, which owns YouTube, is up, but when a search there returns results from YouTube, they report the same "Invalid URL" error as YouTube.com itself does.

I wonder what has happened, and how long it'll be until it's fixed. Maybe this is the year the internet breaks down...


[Update - In the time it took me to verify and write this entry, YouTube came back. Good for them. Did anyone else notice a problem, or was it just me?]

Carter Smith Makes A Movie

Carter Smith, the son of a (great) Bowdoinham Elementary School teacher, just had his new film The Ruins looked at on CHUD; his first feature film, Bugcrush, was shot in my high school, and it looks like he's doing very well.

Take a look at the IMDB page for The Ruins; that's Grant Major of The Lord of the Rings doing production design, Darius Khondji of Delicatessen, La cité des enfants perdus, and Se7en who's shooting it, and Dreamworks that's financing/distributing it. Plus, some guy named Ben Stiller is producing.

Congratulations, Carter!

1960's: Do Not Use

In 11th grade, my AP US History class made a video documentary (almost two hours long!) about the 1960's. The song we used to introduce the Vietnam War?

Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth."

Says Neil Genzlinger, from the New York Times:

Its instantly recognizable two-note opening rings like an alarm bell for the viewer: “Warning: Regurgitation of a lot of stuff you already know ahead.”

Goddamn it, he's right. We were in high school, but what's your excuse, Mr. Brokaw?

Night Shift Causes Cancer

From CBS News:

...Scientists suspect that overnight work is dangerous because it disrupts the circadian rhythm, the body's biological clock. The hormone melatonin, which can suppress tumor development, is normally produced at night.

I hope my two years of this didn't take the same two years off of the end of my life. Plus, I flip-flopped my share at the end, which is apparently worse.

The New Words of 2007

Grant Barrett put together a nice write-up on words that were cemented into the vernacular last year.

Although many were not first said or written in 2007, they are nonetheless the tattoos, scars and medals that differentiate this year from any other.

Sad reality of my life? I've used the word "mobisode" professionally for over two years now.

Sigh.

A Couple of Cool Videos

Here're a few internet finds from the past week or so:



Say what?



That's some great machinima; I especially love the hand wave at the start, and the arm raise that cuts to air guitars for the first chorus. Also, it's a cool ass song.



This is the kind of thing you wouldn't believe if someone told you. Watch the whole thing, it's incredible.



I really love the quality of their moving timelapse; they probably just did wide-angle photography, and then created the camera move in a computer by zooming in and moving the frame, but it still looks damn cool.


Lastly, click here to catch a (brief) glimpse of the new Henry Selick film of Neil Gaiman's Coraline. I read the book over the holiday and loved it; it was kind of like "House of Leaves" for kids. So I look forward to this 3-D film, which is also boasting a killer cast. Except for... Terry Hatcher?!

Dumbass

It's hard to believe anyone can take this seriously; every few years, Northern Maine starts talking about secession, but that makes a lot more sense, and also has the merit of having become almost traditional. When the loggers and farmers say their interests are different from those of the tourism/vacation industry, I get it, even though I disagree. But when the mayor of a town that relies on tourism starts complaining about supporting our northern friends, that's just plain stupid.

"The state of Maine needs South Portland more than South Portland needs the state of Maine," Soule said in his inaugural address to about 35 people in the council chambers.

If your inaugural address is to 35 people, maybe you should settle down a bit.

Quickly

I got really frustrated with the love that 28 Weeks Later got this summer. Other than an intense and startling opening ten minutes, I found it be one of the dullest and most unoriginal movies of the summer. Incredibly disappointing.

So it makes me happy to see other, more famous and respected people rip into it— see #7.

Long Live Neill Cumpston

"Neill Cumpston" submits early movie reviews to Ain't It Cool News every so often, and they are pretty much always damned hilarious. There are a lot of rumors that he may, in fact, be Patton Oswalt, who is himself pretty much always damned hilarious, so hey, there may be some truth here.

Not that it matters since, in the end, his reviews rock.

Digging through the AICN archives, I found a few exemplary submissions from years recent and long past:

• A great review of Spider-Man 3


• A review of Batman Begins


• A review of The Matrix Reloaded


• And my personal favorite, a review for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Well worth checking out; better irony (and enthusiasm!) in film criticism is hard to find.

Enchanted

I intended to write about Disney's Enchanted when I saw it a while back, but, as is so often the case, I found myself distracted.

So here are the two (and a half?) most salient of my thoughts on the matter:

• Amy Adams just may be the cutest person ever. Seriously. The movie works because of her. Well, her and the fact that...


• James Marsden is the man. We thought he was wooden in the X-Men films, but it turns out the man is incredible.
  
  
  • Corollary to the above: Some day, James Marsden will get the girl,* and when he does, I'll be there.**

[* I know he sometimes ends up with a girl, or that the girl stays with him, but he's always playing second fiddle to some other man. So yes, I mean it when I say that he'll get the girl. ⇪]
[** It looks like that time may come in 27 Dresses, so I guess I have to go and see that now... ⇪]

Godwin's Law

Brilliant.

And true.

No Country

This is a damn fantastic bit of film analysis, taking a look at the end of the Coen Brothers' No Country For Old Men.

Simple ideas, backed up by the text. And I love the concept of a Glass Key ending. My mind starts skipping towards Chinatown just thinking about it...


[c/o Scanners]

Also on Kottke

Goddamn, if Jason Kottke doesn't find the best stuff.

Here're a few highlights from the same post I got the previous Star Wars link from:

• Minority Kart. Oh hell yes.


• In light of my recent conversation with Will re: Kanye, holy shit this is wonderful.


• Kottke's into photography, and finds amazing stuff, as seen here and here.


• Here's something my whole family would find interesting.


• Justice is served.

At the end of the day, though, I'm just ripping Kottke off as I rattle off his finds, so please, go check out this post, then check out the rest.

Retconned: A New Sith

This is brilliant, a great look at the deeper ramifications of the Star Wars prequels:

The Millenium Falcon may look like a beat-up old freighter but it can outrun any Imperial ship in normal space or hyperspace, hang in a firefight with a Star Destroyer or outmaneouvre a dozen top-of-the-line TIE fighters. It's a remarkable feat of engineering and must have cost a colossal fortune to build. How does Han come to own a ship like that? He only thinks he does, actually it's Chewie's. Half-way through RotS, we see the Falcon landing at the Senate building on Coruscant. If it's the same ship (which of course it is) then it was the personal transport of one of the senatorial delegations — a much more likely source to commission its design.

This neatly sums up one of my main beefs with Lucas' expanded Star Wars vision, or at least the root of many of my issues: that all his work only contracts this Universe. Everyone important was already important 30 years ago, Anakin made C-3PO, Boba Fett is a clone of the guy Clone Troopers are based on, R2-D2 was Anakin's co-pilot like he would later be Luke's, etc. Makes for a whole lot of coincidence and over-familiarity.

Nothing is new or surprising. Freshness is replaced by the quick-to-wear-off flash of recognition. Boring.

Imagine if, instead of Lando, it was Jar Jar Binks in Cloud City. Same effect.

Side note for nit-pickers: Yes, I know that according to extra-cinematic sources, Chewie was a prisoner/slave, and Han rescued him. But we don't see any of that in the films, so really, just forget all about that.


[c/o Kottke]