Lameness to continue for this next week…

Updated on August 14, 2007 By Ken Begg 11 Comments

This is particularly appalling after I held so many of you up for your hard earned cash, but since I’m leaving town on Thursday to visit Joe “Opposable Thumbs Video” Bannerman and his wife and their new daughter, it’ll be the weekend after this before I get much of *anything* up.

After that, though, my decks are basically clear.  I’ve had a succession of visiting family in for the last month or more, and other calls on my time.  After I return next Wednesday, however, my appointment book will return to its normal ‘completely empty’ state, and I’ll start cranking away on reviews and such.  Promise.  I’ve a ton of movies sitting on my TV set, calling my name, and I’ll be getting to them as soon as possible.  Which, again, looks to be near the end of next week.

In the meantime, I hope everyone is enjoying the dog days of summer, and thanks for continuing to visit during this insanely lengthy dry spell.

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  • Timbomania

    I still love you Ken.

  • Kimberly

    We know the reason for the “dry spell.” You’ve been busy commenting on posts over at Dr. Helen’s place, for one thing. That feminist thread was amusing, wasn’t it?

    Now get back to work! Keep those reviews comin’!

  • Ed Richardson

    Have a great trip Ken!

    More JJ Abrams Star Trek news:

    Tom Cruise is going to play a cameo role as the first captain (Capt. Pike) of the Enterprise. Apparently he’s friends with Abrams. Nothing like Tom Cruise hooking cast members up to his E-meter to get them into character. This is going to be a teeth-off for Cruise and Damon as there are no other actors who flash their pearly whites more than those two.

    Abrams is currently scouting locations in Iceland (where Flags of our Fathers of all things was shot – probably because of the volcanic geology).

    Do you guys remember watching Star Trek II or Star Trek IV and actually being excited by a Star Trek movie? Regardless, neither those nor the first one ever got accepted by mainstream audiences. This isn’t going to be a reboot because the franchise never had mainstream success in the first place. This movie will be a blockbuster of immense proportions, something the others never were.

  • Are you sure about Star Trek II? That seems to be the most mainstream of all Trek movies. I’m not a trekkie — if I were, then casually so — but I’d feel safe watching that movie with non-sci-fi fans.

    Also, a safe trip to you, Mr. Begg.

  • hk6909

    The Heckler King pardons your crimes of non-review writing.

  • Ed Richardson

    Well, I Wikipedia-ed Wrath of Khan and yes, it made a bundle. Ten-fold the cost of making the movie and god knows how much in DVD and VHS royalties. Surprisingly, the first ST movie made more theater-wise.

    I guess those two movies and the two that followed were mainstream. I suppose it all ended with what Ken hilariously refers to as “William Shatner’s valentine to himself” – The Undiscovered Country, a movie I actually paid hard-earned teenage money to see (I worked at Popeye’s frying chicken then).

    HOWEVER…there is a major difference between mainstream and blockbuster. Blockbuster means Star Wars, Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Terminator 2 et al. In more contemporary terms, it means Lord of the Rings.

    I don’t know JJ Abrams from next Tuesday. Guy filmed a bunch of tv shows I never watched. Why is this guy helming this? Probably because the franchise was theatrically dragged through the mud for two decades. Can he pull it off? Dunno. The vibes are good though. This guy could catapult himself into Sam Raimi territory.

    In other words: completely useless tv director until he attaches himself to Hollywood with a decently filmed franchise that makes mucho dinero.

    Hopefully, he will be better than Raimi. I loath Raimi’s Spiderman.

  • Hasimir Fenring

    This guy could catapult himself into Sam Raimi territory.

    In other words: completely useless tv director until he attaches himself to Hollywood with a decently filmed franchise that makes mucho dinero.

    Raimi’s work on Spider-Man or in television may be the first time you heard of him, but Mr Raimi was an accomplished film director long before his involvement (as producer) with Xena: Warrior Princess. He has never been a television director; the IMdb lists no TV credits under ‘director’ (though he does have an upcoming TV directing project listed as ‘in talks’).

    Long before Xena, he directed both independent films–such as the classic of modern horror Evil Dead (which influenced a generation of independent filmmakers) and Crimewave–and studio films like Darkman (with Liam ‘Stoneface’ Neeson) and The Quick and the Dead, with Gene ‘God’ Hackman and Sharon ‘Beaver’ Stone.

    During his tenure producing Xena, Raimi helmed For Love of the Game (with His Highness the King of Mediocrity, Kevin Costner) and A Simple Plan (with Bill ‘Game Over Man’ Paxton and Billy Bob ‘Size of Texas’ Thorton).

    So whatever one thinks of the quality of his work, it isn’t fair to characterise Raimi as a TV director who suddenly ‘attached himself to Hollywood’ with Spider-Man. He has been so ‘attached’ since at least 1989-90, when he made Darkman for Universal, a moderate hit that spawned two direct-to-video sequels.

  • Chris Magyar

    Likewise, your assessment of JJ Abrams as “completely useless” is laughable. In an age when creating a network television hit show is only slightly harder than winning the lottery, Abrams wrote and produced “Lost” and “Alias” — two of the hottest non-CSI, non-L&O franchises of the decade. (Just because you never watched them, that doesn’t relegate them to meaningless status.) The fact that he directed a few episodes is incidental to his writing (script) and production (assembling of talent) abilities, and its those that will potentially serve Trek well.

  • Bookworm

    To Ed:

    Also, the “valentine to himself” was Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. The Undiscovered Country was the sixth movie in the series, and it was actually quite good. (Well, *I* think so, anyway.)

  • Ed Richardson

    Well, I have to confess that I am a total snob when it comes to film vs tv. Outside of documentaries and cooking shows, television holds little interest for me. I find ultra-successful tv series like 24 and CSI laughable. The exposition alone in the writing is moronic. It’s cookie cutter crap for the masses that unfortunately sometimes finds its way behind a movie camera. Case in point: Fracture, a movie directed by a tv hack director. It feels like you’re watching tv. It looks like it was shot as an episode of CSI or something.

    Second case in point: Breach. This is a movie with an Oscar performance by Chris Coopoer that feels and looks like a tv show.

    Ergo, when I see that Abrams has filmed a bunch of episodes of Alias and Lost, I worry when the guy is in charge of the future of Star Trek..Will it feel and look like tv? Will we be treated to a multimillion dollar episode of Lost because Abrams can’t get beyond tv convention? Does Abrams lie awake at night watching Hitchcock, Welles, Kubrick, and Kurosawa? Probably not.

    As for Raimi, I know Evil Dead is a cult classic and I was eager to see it and finally did just the other month but it did nothing for me, same as Peter Jackson’s Brain Dead – which I seem to be alone in having no regard for it.

    Raimi’s Spiderman series is one of the most schmaltzy, melodromatic, predictable franchises I’ve ever seen. On top of it the CGI Spiderman moves horribly. There’s nothing realistic about it.

  • BeckoningChasm

    Didn’t Abrams direct the 3rd Mission Impossible film? He also wrote Armageddon as I recall (along with about fifteen other folks).

    Whether he can pull off a successful Star Trek movie or not I don’t know, I think the franchise has been stretched beyond the public’s willingness to go.