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May. 26th, 2009 01:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynEven though I am free from having to teach class now, I am not technically free, as I have to review all the student projects that got sent in at the end, which I hate. Why must they always wait till the last minute? It's so boring slogging through all the bad writing to find the places I have to tell them they could offer help to the writer on -- one person sent me the whole 440-page ms. she's working on (around 50 pages is the general limit I set so that they would get a chance to edit, but not have too much above the work they already have for class).
I had hoped to have a nice holiday weekend of at least some fun in amongst the toil, but there was not much of that to be had, mostly just toil. Dad and I went to all the family graves on Saturday and it took pretty much the whole day -- partly because there are so many of them, partly because he's walking so slowly and in so much pain these days, but mostly because I had to dig out all the vases from each site, as they'd all grown over with grass and dirt. There I was in the unusually hot sun for a May weekend, trying to find the spots with the vases with dad's bear knife, and then trying to dig and pull them out with my fingers. It was tedious, yo.
But every once in a while dad cracks me up. A few years ago we were driving over to southern Idaho and he launched into this rant about people who have flags flying all over their cars and why they feel they have to advertise their version of patriotism when it doesn't make them anymore patriotic than anyone else. Then Saturday he rather vigorously declined to buy a flag for my mom's parents' graves at the one cemetery they're in because he didn't believe he needed to spend that much money for "free" flags that aren't free because the Boy Scouts hit you up for a donation if you take one, and he didn't want to support an organization that way, and also, they discriminated against gays. This is my Republican, lifetime-NRA member, decorated WWII-veteran dad. Sometimes I really like him.
Anyways. On Sunday I went to see Star Trek again, and then toiled in the yard, which is so overgrown with weeds and bad stuff that I can't even see the good things, and then toiled all day yesterday as well. So now I'm behind on the student projects, still haven't made a dent in the yard, and am depressed about it. But not about the movie! This time,
First things first: The captain of the Kelvin is hot. Scorch my eyeballs hot. The uniform does nothing for him, but when the camera was close in on that great beaklike nose and that whole ship's prow face of his with the dark and mysterious eyes, I was all "proooOWRrrr" again. I figured that with a name like Faran Tahir (Captain Robau's actor's name), the poor guy has done nothing but play Middle Eastern terrorists, and when I looked him up, sure enough, that's largely it. He's been in a ton of things I've watched (including Alias, hello, JJ Abrams) but I don't think I ever really paid attention to him, probably because he was, you know, a generic insane MET -- including in Iron Man, even though I do remember at one point in that movie wondering if I was a Bad Person because I thought the requisite MET leader with the anger management problem was really hot. But see, stick him in a Star Fleet uniform and give him a Noble Death, and I am so there. I am putty in Captain Robau's futuristic non-MET mitts. OH HAI YES I AM PREDICTABLE. But I know it and accept it.
The only bad thing about him being offed in the first couple minutes is that we won't get to see Capt. Robau again unless they decide to give us a prequel in which we follow the five-year mission of Robau and George Kirk and just try to tell me that their mission to seek out new life and new civilizations wouldn't be totally awesome, and yes, I would totally watch that show. If they can fuck up the ST timeline in this movie, why can't they have a different timeline where the Kelvin doesn't get blowed up and we'd get to see more of Robau (nudge nudge, wink wink) and maybe even sexytimes as he boldly goes where no Middle Eastern man has gone before? I ask you.
I still haven't warmed to Zach Quinto's Spock completely. I mean, I like this version of Spock in some ways, but I think I see it as someone playing Spock, rather than inhabiting Spock. Partly it's because I still have that problem of my Sylar-hate, which, as I predicted, is lessening the more I see it, but a lot of it is that he doesn't have that ineffable, indescribable something that Nimoy had -- he was very mysterious in his otherness, both as a Vulcan serving with humans, and as a Vulcan on a homeworld he never fully belonged to. He was always apart, and yet defined a great deal by his friendship with Kirk, not to mention McCoy. And I notice in the movie that there are prime eyebrow opportunities that Quinto instead furrows his brow over, and I longed for more eyebrowing and less furrowing.
I think some of it may be the relationship with Uhura. While I really like that and thought it was an interesting risk to take, it also dilutes a lot of what made Spock so fascinatingly mysterious and apart. He's macking with his GF in public and so suddenly he becomes a much different character, one I'm not sure I warm to as much as I did the original version. I loved Spock like mad when I was younger, and have always loved him. I adored Vulcan and wanted to be a Vulcan after I saw Amok Time. (Of course, part of being a Vulcan was that I'd be able to make up for him being ditched and marry him and have little part-human Vulcan babies.) I *still* love Spock more than most other Trek character, but in the movie, I find that it's McCoy who gets me the most, so it's all very cognitive dissonancy.
I'm still thrown, also, by the plot holes. I have always had a hard time speedbumping stuff the way most fans do, and I keep getting stuck on stuff like why didn't the Kelvin's self-destruct ramming of the Romulan ship do some real damage to it? It certainly should have. But it seems like nothing happens. Also, supernovas don't just happen without warning, and science would have been so much better by then that they could have figured it out in enough time to get the red matter there, it seems. I mean, why so late? Maybe it came in the middle of mass pon farr? What? So, Romulus still exists in this timeline, but I hope that means the supernova will be better predicted and they will save Romulus, even though they couldn't protect my beloved Vulcan. Because otherwise they are serious dumbasses.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sherrold keeps trying to remind me that the other classic Trek timeline still exists, but these kinds of things drive me nuts, so I can't take my mind away from this new timeline and how everything's mixed up. Because I still can't handle the fact that Vulcan is no longer there. WAH! I guess I'm a one-timeline-at-a-time sort of girl.
Also, why the hell is Nero wading around in a cesspool when he's trying to get the info out of Pike? I mean, okay, everything's powered by crystals and whatnot, but it's still power, so there is still current running through all those cables in the water he's sloshing around in, so ... why the water? What is the purpose of it? It doesn't really make a lot of sense and the fact that there are giant power cables in the water just... whu? And what happened to the giant earwig? Kirk just cuts Pike loose and rescues him, but would the Romulans have just taken out the giant earwig after they'd gotten the information? This seems more generous than they would likely be. And I keep losing it on the fight scene with Kirk and Nero because it's so Galaxy Quest I keep laughing -- really, the big long platforms of nothingness? I hear Sigourney Weaver shouting "that was a badly written episode!"
Chekhov was even cuter this time around, although he is more like a completely alternate character to me. I watched The Trouble With Tribbles this weekend, and I really feel like, even with Walter Koenig's terrible generic TV Russian accent, he's playing a very different sort of person than the guy named Chekhov in the movie is. It's like, Anton Yelchin doesn't even resemble him in any way, so they just created an entirely new character who happens to have the same name and also comes from Russia (but has a much better accent because that's where Yelchin was born, in fact). And I hate to say it, but I think I actually like this Chekhov more. He's just so freaking cute with his "I can do dees" and his "weector weector" stuff, and he has a million-kilowatt smile, and he's just 17! I wish I knew what he exclaims when he pulls Kirk and Sulu back. It's so cute it makes my teeth ache.
Most of all, this time, I appreciated Chris Pine more. He does some nice Shatnerian line deliveries and body language, but he really feels very original. Every picture I saw of him before I just thought he looked like a dumbass standard TV prettyboy, but he really proved he can do more when it all came together. I couldn't understand the casting until I saw the movie, and the second time, he really impressed me. Also, he has great comic timing -- the whole thing with the hands just kills me each time. Asmlynsaid, that hypodermic injector thing never gets old -- it actually keeps getting funnier each time.
I managed to see a few more names around that big tribunal table thing this time -- I do love how many past characters they put on that dais. They doled out the familiar phrases so well, too. It never felt overdone, but it acknowledges people's feelings for the show.
I had hoped to have a nice holiday weekend of at least some fun in amongst the toil, but there was not much of that to be had, mostly just toil. Dad and I went to all the family graves on Saturday and it took pretty much the whole day -- partly because there are so many of them, partly because he's walking so slowly and in so much pain these days, but mostly because I had to dig out all the vases from each site, as they'd all grown over with grass and dirt. There I was in the unusually hot sun for a May weekend, trying to find the spots with the vases with dad's bear knife, and then trying to dig and pull them out with my fingers. It was tedious, yo.
But every once in a while dad cracks me up. A few years ago we were driving over to southern Idaho and he launched into this rant about people who have flags flying all over their cars and why they feel they have to advertise their version of patriotism when it doesn't make them anymore patriotic than anyone else. Then Saturday he rather vigorously declined to buy a flag for my mom's parents' graves at the one cemetery they're in because he didn't believe he needed to spend that much money for "free" flags that aren't free because the Boy Scouts hit you up for a donation if you take one, and he didn't want to support an organization that way, and also, they discriminated against gays. This is my Republican, lifetime-NRA member, decorated WWII-veteran dad. Sometimes I really like him.
Anyways. On Sunday I went to see Star Trek again, and then toiled in the yard, which is so overgrown with weeds and bad stuff that I can't even see the good things, and then toiled all day yesterday as well. So now I'm behind on the student projects, still haven't made a dent in the yard, and am depressed about it. But not about the movie! This time,
First things first: The captain of the Kelvin is hot. Scorch my eyeballs hot. The uniform does nothing for him, but when the camera was close in on that great beaklike nose and that whole ship's prow face of his with the dark and mysterious eyes, I was all "proooOWRrrr" again. I figured that with a name like Faran Tahir (Captain Robau's actor's name), the poor guy has done nothing but play Middle Eastern terrorists, and when I looked him up, sure enough, that's largely it. He's been in a ton of things I've watched (including Alias, hello, JJ Abrams) but I don't think I ever really paid attention to him, probably because he was, you know, a generic insane MET -- including in Iron Man, even though I do remember at one point in that movie wondering if I was a Bad Person because I thought the requisite MET leader with the anger management problem was really hot. But see, stick him in a Star Fleet uniform and give him a Noble Death, and I am so there. I am putty in Captain Robau's futuristic non-MET mitts. OH HAI YES I AM PREDICTABLE. But I know it and accept it.
The only bad thing about him being offed in the first couple minutes is that we won't get to see Capt. Robau again unless they decide to give us a prequel in which we follow the five-year mission of Robau and George Kirk and just try to tell me that their mission to seek out new life and new civilizations wouldn't be totally awesome, and yes, I would totally watch that show. If they can fuck up the ST timeline in this movie, why can't they have a different timeline where the Kelvin doesn't get blowed up and we'd get to see more of Robau (nudge nudge, wink wink) and maybe even sexytimes as he boldly goes where no Middle Eastern man has gone before? I ask you.
I still haven't warmed to Zach Quinto's Spock completely. I mean, I like this version of Spock in some ways, but I think I see it as someone playing Spock, rather than inhabiting Spock. Partly it's because I still have that problem of my Sylar-hate, which, as I predicted, is lessening the more I see it, but a lot of it is that he doesn't have that ineffable, indescribable something that Nimoy had -- he was very mysterious in his otherness, both as a Vulcan serving with humans, and as a Vulcan on a homeworld he never fully belonged to. He was always apart, and yet defined a great deal by his friendship with Kirk, not to mention McCoy. And I notice in the movie that there are prime eyebrow opportunities that Quinto instead furrows his brow over, and I longed for more eyebrowing and less furrowing.
I think some of it may be the relationship with Uhura. While I really like that and thought it was an interesting risk to take, it also dilutes a lot of what made Spock so fascinatingly mysterious and apart. He's macking with his GF in public and so suddenly he becomes a much different character, one I'm not sure I warm to as much as I did the original version. I loved Spock like mad when I was younger, and have always loved him. I adored Vulcan and wanted to be a Vulcan after I saw Amok Time. (Of course, part of being a Vulcan was that I'd be able to make up for him being ditched and marry him and have little part-human Vulcan babies.) I *still* love Spock more than most other Trek character, but in the movie, I find that it's McCoy who gets me the most, so it's all very cognitive dissonancy.
I'm still thrown, also, by the plot holes. I have always had a hard time speedbumping stuff the way most fans do, and I keep getting stuck on stuff like why didn't the Kelvin's self-destruct ramming of the Romulan ship do some real damage to it? It certainly should have. But it seems like nothing happens. Also, supernovas don't just happen without warning, and science would have been so much better by then that they could have figured it out in enough time to get the red matter there, it seems. I mean, why so late? Maybe it came in the middle of mass pon farr? What? So, Romulus still exists in this timeline, but I hope that means the supernova will be better predicted and they will save Romulus, even though they couldn't protect my beloved Vulcan. Because otherwise they are serious dumbasses.
sherrold keeps trying to remind me that the other classic Trek timeline still exists, but these kinds of things drive me nuts, so I can't take my mind away from this new timeline and how everything's mixed up. Because I still can't handle the fact that Vulcan is no longer there. WAH! I guess I'm a one-timeline-at-a-time sort of girl.Also, why the hell is Nero wading around in a cesspool when he's trying to get the info out of Pike? I mean, okay, everything's powered by crystals and whatnot, but it's still power, so there is still current running through all those cables in the water he's sloshing around in, so ... why the water? What is the purpose of it? It doesn't really make a lot of sense and the fact that there are giant power cables in the water just... whu? And what happened to the giant earwig? Kirk just cuts Pike loose and rescues him, but would the Romulans have just taken out the giant earwig after they'd gotten the information? This seems more generous than they would likely be. And I keep losing it on the fight scene with Kirk and Nero because it's so Galaxy Quest I keep laughing -- really, the big long platforms of nothingness? I hear Sigourney Weaver shouting "that was a badly written episode!"
Chekhov was even cuter this time around, although he is more like a completely alternate character to me. I watched The Trouble With Tribbles this weekend, and I really feel like, even with Walter Koenig's terrible generic TV Russian accent, he's playing a very different sort of person than the guy named Chekhov in the movie is. It's like, Anton Yelchin doesn't even resemble him in any way, so they just created an entirely new character who happens to have the same name and also comes from Russia (but has a much better accent because that's where Yelchin was born, in fact). And I hate to say it, but I think I actually like this Chekhov more. He's just so freaking cute with his "I can do dees" and his "weector weector" stuff, and he has a million-kilowatt smile, and he's just 17! I wish I knew what he exclaims when he pulls Kirk and Sulu back. It's so cute it makes my teeth ache.
Most of all, this time, I appreciated Chris Pine more. He does some nice Shatnerian line deliveries and body language, but he really feels very original. Every picture I saw of him before I just thought he looked like a dumbass standard TV prettyboy, but he really proved he can do more when it all came together. I couldn't understand the casting until I saw the movie, and the second time, he really impressed me. Also, he has great comic timing -- the whole thing with the hands just kills me each time. As
mlynsaid, that hypodermic injector thing never gets old -- it actually keeps getting funnier each time. I managed to see a few more names around that big tribunal table thing this time -- I do love how many past characters they put on that dais. They doled out the familiar phrases so well, too. It never felt overdone, but it acknowledges people's feelings for the show.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-05-26 11:36 pm (UTC)And Chris - he was really a mini-Shatner, just the way his mouth quirked sometimes, or a little gesture here and there.
I was missing eliade, and found your post via her flist BTW
no subject
Date: 2009-06-03 03:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-03 07:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-27 12:19 am (UTC)yes! i do actually buy this angry, graceless spock as a valid characterization choice for young!spock (although it's not the one i would go with personally) but it just doesn't charm me. enjoy your smugness more, quinto!spock!
chris pine is AWESOME. although trying to watch interviews with the two of them is just impossible, they are so relentlessly wb-looking out of costume.
actually, i basically agree with everything you said, except for the bloated hands really creeped me out!
no subject
Date: 2009-05-27 12:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-03 03:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-03 03:38 am (UTC)inflammation is scary and gross. ::shudders::
no subject
Date: 2009-05-27 07:11 pm (UTC)I think that quality was Nimoy's Jewishness coming into play here. Unlike Shatner, a very assimilated Canadian Jew who, let's face it, passed as a goy throughout his career, Nimoy was raised as an observant conservative (if not orthodox) Jew, and I think this is where that quality of otherness originated (along with the Vulcan salute, a representation of which I've seen on the walls of nearly every synagogue). He totally knew everything about being "the other," particularly in a generation and a milieu which were largely intolerant to Jews.
Quinto brings another sort of otherness to the role, I think - it's widely believed in Hollywood that he's gay, and if his Spock's tamping down of his humanity isn't drawn from another sort of tamping down, then I don't know what. :) In any case, I love his Spock - there's a core of sorrow in him which Nimoy was only able to flash one or two times in the entire history of the story, and it sets Quinto's characterization apart. He's great.
And I notice in the movie that there are prime eyebrow opportunities that Quinto instead furrows his brow over, and I longed for more eyebrowing and less furrowing.
I do agree with this, but I suppose it's just something the actor does unconsciously, and he wasn't directed to do otherwise. :/
no subject
Date: 2009-06-03 03:27 am (UTC)Well, let's hope that maybe there will be more eyebrow raising in the future. And I hope they continue to take it into new places.