Star Trek: Generations

I wonder how those old shows that I grew up watching every day, for so many years of my life, are currently regarded by the viewing public.

No doubt the manifest enthusiasm ebbs and flows from realm to juridiction, and even within open-minded circles trends and novelties come and go.

Without conducting a Foucauldian investigation I imagine interest is still strong nevertheless, and I recall seeing The Original Series trending on Netflix less than 5 years ago.

It doesn't age, especially after you stop watching TV for years and then one day find yourself sitting down to watch an episode, the VHS copy you recently found at a thrift store in far reaching wholesome working condition.

It was a Next Generation cassette and humbly featured Jean-Luc Picard, whose leadership style wholeheartedly disseminates a virtuous contradiction to Trump.

He listens closely to what others are saying and sincerely values their opinions, and looks forward to fair negotiations that treat different parties with mutual respect.

He's as anti-Trump as they come and a solid example for leaders to follow, the show's called Star Trek: The Next Generation, and it presents administrators who aren't buffoons.

But back in the day, The Original Series generally ruled the cultural roost, and was usually regarded as the cherished frontrunner when it came to comparisons between the series.

People were therefore uncertain how The Next Generation films would do, having to follow the trusted footsteps of the original widespread broadcast sensation. 

In hindsight, The Original Series showcases potentially timeless episodes, that I still love to watch every 5 years or so, unlike so much old school television.

It was cancelled early though perhaps dues to the interracial kiss, and religious criticisms of a popular world so far beyond rigid biblical discipline.

The Next Generation had a longer run and was able to do a lot more consequently.

So many clever intricate storylines.

I can't believe they didn't make more films.

It's tempting to just watch the movies because watching movies is always tempting, but try to save Star Trek: Generations until you've watched The Original Series, the first six Star Trek films, and the entire Next Generation run.

You'll appreciate Kirk meeting Picard so much more if this is the course you follow.

It's not as bad as some critics claim.

There are some issues (how can you just leave the Nexus and physically go anywhere you want in time for instance?).

But it's still really cool year after year. 

D.A.R.Y.L

My quest to see every film I missed during my youth continues.

A young lad finds himself awakening in a peaceful new community, with no memories of his former life, curious and thoughtful yet hesitant and shy, as he hopes and prays to rediscover his identity (Barret Oliver as Daryl). 

Fortunately, a loving couple is eager to watch over as his parents are sought, hoping to adopt their own children one day, and to prove they can parent and prosper.

Yet wee Daryl requires little nurturing and even begins to annoy his new mom (Mary Beth Hurt as Joyce Richardson), since he's neat and tidy and helpful and kind and requires no assistance to endearingly excel.

His new friend Turtle (Danny Corkill) patiently explains that parents like to be instructive and contradictory, and whether or not his advice is reasonable, it certainly helps out in the context of the film.

Wherein which neigh lo and behold it turns out Daryl is in fact a robot, who was set free from a secretive laboratory hellbent on subjecting him to constant tests.

And the government reps who have financed his genesis no longer seek to prolong his life, in fact he's been targeted for callous termination with little regard for his nascent wonder.

Yet as he's existed up close with a loving family an unexpected miracle has bountifully bloomed, for he's learned to love and make friends and warmly integrate within a community. 

The scientists are resoundingly ecstatic and risk their lives in order to save his.

He's able to provide incisive aid.

Instantaneous ingenious translation.

D.A.R.Y.L celebrates the emergence of family emphatically resisting inanimate life, the chance to live and grow within alternative paradigms daringly attuned to wholesome eccentricity. 

Daryl's much more like Superman inasmuch as he likes people and productivity, he just wants to integrate and have constructive fun without causing distressing incredulous uproar. 

But I'm afraid I'm too invested in The Terminator (released a year before) to support initiatives radically advancing A.I., one robot like Data is perhaps beneficial, thousands upon thousands like a legion of Zods.

That does seem to be the way things are headed though, the profits too incredible to be ethically ignored, hopefully they don't start replacing people with robots nevertheless, highly advanced organisms just don't get daily life.

Rather than focusing our attention on A.I why not look to find new ways to advance green technologies, while helping out real cats and dogs etc. living in shelters, rather than buying robot pets.

People aren't so bad a lot of the time there's so much poetry beyond pretension.

Just have to let go and detect it.

Soak it in.

Embrace.

Diversify. 

Co-starring Michael McKean (Andy Richardson).

Witness

A young Amish child (Lukas Haas as Samuel) on his first trip to the big city, finds himself immersed in high level corruption, after witnessing a brutal murder, while waiting for his train to depart.

As unaware of the repercussions as the honest cop who takes his statement (Harrison Ford as John Book), he's soon revealed the identity of the killer, and it's indeed one of New York's finest (Danny Glover as McFee).

Book soon transfers the knowledge to his supervisor, but he's placed his trust in the wrong elite cop, shots fired shortly thereafter, moments later he's on the crazed run.

To Amish country.

Where no one will find him.

If he can keep that yap shut.

And refrain from scandalous endeavours.

Work abounds in the old school surroundings, as does temptation, and orthodox rules.

Surveillance haunts disputed emotion.

There's no quarter, no frank ergo sum.

Long before cellphones guaranteed law enforcement could ubiquitously monitor the population, public movements were still often scrutinized, private pastimes uprightly presumed.

In tight-knit communities anyways, and at work, and at home, the concept of privacy still had much more meaning, and could at least be theoretically conceived.

Without vast resources.

Headstrong individualism meets its panoptic particulars in Peter Weir's forbidding Witness, as a trustworthy by the book policeperson closely follows established rules.

Having once taken procedure for granted, he struggles to meticulously adjust, his genuine goodness guiding the way, his bold temper begetting comeuppance.

A sympathetic depiction of the Amish unreels within, beyond sociopolitical constructs, a simple existence with nothing to hide, harmless living for strict rule followers.

The disruption may indeed be controversial, but it's integrated without fuss or alarm, peaceful ways still cognizant of justice, willing to aid distraught virtue in peril.

L'amour.

Restraint.

Confinements of the hypothetical.

Urban tempers so feisty condoned.

An odd mix that could have been more controversial.

En man som heter Ove (A Man Called Ove)

A routine lifetime, sturdy crystalline productive disciplined rigour, shocks and surges and synergies refreshed and reconstituted, dis/ingenuous gravitas, im/pertinent shallows, crises, crucibles, cubicles, companionship, curmudgeony coca, grumpy old bear, shattered inveterate disrepair, friendly yet fiendish, stubborn yet understanding, a bleeding heart with no tolerance for stupidity, a prognostic paradigm, tired of living alone.

An unwilling multicaring master of quotidian ceremonies seeks to end it all after having grown none too fond of his lonely predicament.

Yet every suicide attempt fails as curious neighbours inquisitively interrupt him.

In search of aid.

Will the attempts stop as Ove (Rolf Lassgård) accepts his necessary role or is the loss of his wife simply too much to ignore?

To unburden.

I should have just called him an aging romantic.

Old school know-how, postmodernly applicable.

Comedy, tragedy, dismissals and outrage fluidly blend and contradict as Hannes Holm's En man som heter Ove (A Man Called Ove) proves that life's worth living.

From driving lessons to guidance counselling to children's stories to a complimentary spade, the film ironically employs a grouchy weathered patriarch to communalize arabs, gay people, eccentrics, regular joes, and the happy-go-lucky.

Captivatingly so.

There are moments where people air their grievances only to be briskly reminded of the greatness they have undeniably achieved.

According to Ove's incisive summaries.

But the film isn't preachy, such dialogue is expertly woven in to avoid seeming too emotional, to counterintuitively use implausibility to capture something realistic.

I don't know much about what's happening in Sweden these days, but I can claim that En man som heter Ove internationally and often hilariously synthesizes the left and the right while pretending like it'd rather be stretched out on a couch watching reruns of Cheers, or the Swedish equivalent of the celebrated American sitcom.

Sort of like hot chocolate.

Points to make, style to consider.

Ove may not want to do anything ever, but whenever he attempts something, he engages full-throttle.

Occasionally expressing road rage.

The Giver

Meticulously manicured impartial immersions, the plan, plans within plans within plans, permeating every existential aspect, monitoring, coordinating, harmonious atonal strategically serviced scripts, requirements, nothing out of the ordinary, pharmaceutical synchrony, burnished, witnessed, tanned, The Giver, kindred subjects of Landru, converses with The Third Man, sonic scientific sterility, empiric equilibrium, disciplined and unified, microscopically maintained.

Everything fits within a cohesive holistic whole.

But there's no longer any joy.

No exceptions to the rules.

History's legends have been assigned to one aged caretaker, who sacrifices his knowledge to uphold the new order.

But a protégé is chosen from the ranks of his culture's youth, to share in his burden, to preserve the memories of lost time.

Emotional bombardments proceed to alienate through shock as questions hitherto beyond reason maddeningly dare to forsake.

Exfoliate.

Threadbare.

A classic examination of totalitarian benevolence.

Maudlin yet sane.

Preferred The Third Man.

Star Trek Into Darkness

Star Trek, born again.

Was a bit disappointed that Star Trek was born again with the crew from The Original Series, but it's not like there aren't manifold versions of Hamlet out there, Batman will likely live to see another day, Hawaii Five-O is back (I've never seen either of the series), and Beatles and Rolling Stones cover bands will likely continue to sing for centuries to come. 

I was hoping to see the Rolling Stones in Montréal next month but the cheapest seat I could find near the rafters costs over 200 hundred dollars. I paid 34 dollars to see them in 1994.

Bring on the cover bands.

Star Trek Into Darkness confidently gambles that the success of its predecessor paved the way for it to take greater liberties with Star Trek's most sacred moments, and I'm assuming every Trekkie has already seen the film twice, and are already dividing into different fastidious factions, each with their own take on the reintroduction of Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch), and the pastiche of Star Trek II's classic ending, so I'm discussing related plot details.

In my opinion, the new cast and crew of the Starship Enterprise were ill-equipped and unready to incorporate this classic ending, nor the famous Khan scream, and their sophomoric attempts to do so, more concerned with travelling at warp speed than taking the time to generate genuine emotion, even though the trap they fall into justifies this dependence, and within the film the new cast and crew is ill-equipped and unready to confront their adversaries, were, still, disheartening.

The cameo from Leonard Nimoy didn't suck me in. 

Giving Chekov (Anton Yelchin) and Sulu (John Cho) expanded responsibilities while leaving them primarily in the background heightened the tension.

The who-should-be-captain dialogue between Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) was played out in the last film. 

And McCoy's (Karl Urban) all wrong (no offense to Karl Urban, he does his best with the material).   

Still though, if they hadn't touched Star Trek II's ending, and classic Khan scream, Into Darkness could have been quite different. 

And it's not that I didn't think the fight between Khan and Spock was awesome. It's always awesome when Spock suddenly fights in a Star Trek moment, since you suddenly remember that not only is he one of the phenomenon's smartest humanoid characters, he's also one of the toughest.

Giving Carol Marcus (Alice Eve) a strong supporting hopefully continuous role was a great idea. 

Introducing consequential conflict amongst the senior staff, Scotty (Simon Pegg) and Kirk, went beyond the professional dynamics found in the films featuring the cast of The Original Series, and since this consequential conflict sees constructive results, it fits nicely with contemporary conflict management theories, while directly encouraging freewill.   

Benedict Cumberbatch impresses as Khan. 

Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and Spock's relationship reappears but isn't focused upon, rather, it comically ameliorates an otherwise typical shuttlecraft descension, accentuating the difficulties of sustaining romantic ties to people with whom you work, while giving Spock a memorable opportunity to advance his coherent logic. 

Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller) provides a pestiferous dimension rarely seen within the Federation, thereby diversifying Star Trek's internal cohesions, while preempting a sequel, sigh, where there's a war with the Klingons. 

This seems more like Picard territory, where there's a possible war, but Picard finds a way to negotiate a peaceful settlement. 

Much too early for Picard however.

Perhaps the Borg will attack midway resulting in a sudden pact between Klingons and the Federation.

Kirk never fought the Borg.

Please don't revisit the Nexus. 

But a different ending. Something radically different. This would have lessened the cheesy kitsch factor and not caused me to immediately remove my 3D glasses. 

The Wrath of Khan is the only Star Trek film that can stand on its own outside the Star Trek parallax. 

Discourses of the sacred. 

Khan!