Closet Sci-Fi Geek

I just watched Ghostbusters on YouTube – the full-length movie is available for free, with the minor annoyance of a few brief ads cutting through actual sentences here and there.

I love this movie. Right from the start, with the librarian dealing with a ghost who likes toying with books and card catalogs, it’s a ton of fun. I remember when I first saw it and the Stay Puft Marshallow Man appeared. I was laughing so hard, I was crying. The 80s was such a great decade for big, fun movies.

I guess there’s a Ghostbusters III in the works, scheduled for 2012….just in time for the end of the world per the Mayan Calendar!

August 16th, 2009 | Category: 1980s, Comedy/Satire, Movies, Retro Sci-Fi | Leave a comment

I am visiting my mom and she suggested that we go check out Star Trek at the theater – much to my shock, since she’s never been into sci-fi. I hadn’t gotten around to seeing it yet so I was very pleased that mom wanted to go. She loved it! She found it to be very entertaining and had a great time. A female friend of mine who is also not into sci-fi at all also just recommended the new Star Trek movie on Facebook.

And that, I think, is the greatest strength of this new Trek – it brings in people who are not sci-fi fans, particularly women, it seems. So on that front, this movie is a huge success.

Obviously, if you are a real Trek fan, you’ll know that quite a few Trekkers/Trekkies are seriously pissed off about it. Rebooting the entire Trek universe, and wiping out 40 years of Canon? Spock and Uhuru? Vulcan gone? Whaaaat???

I went into the movie totally fresh, having avoided reading any reviews of it until I’d seen it. I had no idea it was a reboot. I was sitting there scratching my head as to why Chekov was already onboard the Enterprise when finally the plot revealed that this was an alternative timeline. (I’m not so up on Trek Canon that I remembered whether Kirk’s father was alive or not.)

I totally expected everything to “reset” back to normal at the end of the film, and I was blown away when they didn’t. (This surprised my mom too!) But actually, I’d say that was one of the better aspects of the film. Having seen the Standard Star Trek Timeline Reset Plot waaaaayyyy too many times at this point (especially on Voyager), I was glad someone finally had the balls to keep things screwed up and different.

My mom and I have decided this “reboot” is not actually wiping out all the stuff that happened to the “original” Kirk and crew, but it is rather an alternative or parallel universe that the old Spock is now stuck in. Otherwise, had the original universe been wiped clean, old Spock would have disappeared as in Back to the Future. (As my mom explained, the old timeline still has to exist for the old Spock to continue existing, it is only “logical,” and since he is a Vulcan, it has to be based on logic! You go, Mom!)

Given that I’m willing to accept that this new Trek does not in any way negate Original Trek, I’m a bit more forgiving than some Trek fans over this new timeline and the events thereof (including the Spock and Uhuru thing, which will either be annoying or interesting in future sequels).

So putting that big huge issue aside, here’s my take on the rest of the film:

Loved the casting for the new Kirk and Spock – both were fantastic, and cute I might add so good eye candy for the ladies.

New McCoy kicked ass, but I wished he had some better lines in parts.

I liked the new Scottie, though some complained he was too silly…I still liked him. I was just confused as to how he got immediately promoted to Chief Engineer once arriving on the Enterprise. Where’d the original one go?

New Sulu was OK…they didn’t give him much to work with so I can’t really judge. I did love his unfolding sword though. More of that, please!

New Chekov…umm…yeah, not my favorite. Chekov was supposed to be the young hottie for the girls watching the orignal Star Trek, modeled after the Beatles and the Monkees. This new Chekov looked like he had been living in a cave all his life and had never seen sunlight. Unappealing.

New Uhuru: Pretty, but not bringing the presence that Nichelle Nichols had.

Plotwise, the writing was pretty poor, especially for a J.J. Abrams project, who has been so meticulous with Lost that I expect much more from him. But the action was definitely entertaining and the pace was quick, so you didn’t have time while watching to ponder the numerous inconsistencies and ridiculous events (such as Kirk getting dumped off at the very planet Old Spock was on). Watching all the machinations they went through to get all the characters together was downright painful at times.

Otherwise, I was entertained and enjoyed it, and felt it was certainly better than some of the worse Next Generation films. (What about that awful one where they go to the planet with eternal life? That was certainly underwhelming.)

The brightest spot for me was the appearance of Leonard Nimoy as Old Spock. Once he started speaking, I was reminded how good the original cast was. Nimoy brought so much to the screen with his performance, even at his advanced age. As good as the young Spock was, he was definitely served by Nimoy.

Overall, I give this film at B+ – to me it’s not the worst Trek movie ever but it’s definitely no Wrath of Khan.

I think that future installments (as I’m sure there will be) will actually be much better. We won’t have to deal with the awkward introductions and whatnot to get the crew together. We’ll just have our new Kirk at the helm, galavanting around the galaxy with his intense blue eyes (loved those blue eyes – sorry Shatner).

Not really true Trek, but honestly? They could have done a lot worse. I remember how upset I was when Next Generation came out. I originally hated that with a passion. This is a million times better than that first Next Generation episode, so perhaps they’ll improve with the next film and we can start over again with this being the ODD number of the new Trek movies, and number two, the EVEN number, will be good. (That’s our Trek movie luck, right?)

We can only hope.

May 30th, 2009 | Category: Movies, Star Trek | Comments (2)

Hopefully Lost won’t end in the same semi-lame-o way BSG did – but so far, so good, this season’s cliffhanger was a doozy. (SPOILER ALERT! Don’t read anything else if you haven’t seen the latest episide!)

A couple of random thoughts: First off, I don’t get why people are questioning whether Juliet set off the bomb at the end of the episode. Of course she did! The question is: What will happen to our favorite Losties once a nuclear explosion comes in contact with a huge pocket of electro-magnetic radiation? My guess: More time travel!

One thing I have not seen on the Lost boards, surprisingly, is any commentary on the radiation suits Desmond and whats-his-face who used to be on Earth 2 and Carnivale had to put on whenever leaving the hatch. The “sickness” was the radiation poisoning…right? The question then remains, how was this cleared out so quickly by the time 2004 came around?

OK…so the big question is, who is this Jacob guy and what is his relation to the man in black? (Mr. Baddie, which some are referring to as “Esau” per the Biblical reference?)

I do think Jacob is a good guy. A semi-manipulative good guy, bringing people to the island to see if they can overcome their baser instincts. Mr. Baddie is the devil, the tempter, who we think now is somehow related to the black smoke.

Well, well, this is starting to get metaphysical. Let’s back up for a moment and return to the nuclear bomb:

Do our friends survive it? I am going to guess yes. Our big clue was the close up of the eye opening up at the end of the next season promo. That’s Jack, waking up in the forest, in the same spot, only now he’s been transported to 2007. He is part of the group that Jacob referred to when he said “they’re coming.”

All the other time travelers – Sawyer, Juliet, Sayid, Miles, Jin, and Hurley, will also be reappearing in 2007. 

However, with Jacob dead, and Mr. Baddie aka Bad Locke running the island, you can be assured that all hell is going to break loose.

Somehow in all this, we’ll have a flashblack to show us how the Black Rock got stuck in the island, where Richard comes from, and all that other hoo-ha.

Will we be flashing forward to 2012 and the end of the world? It remains to be seen. But given how tightly the story is coming together, I’m going to guess that however this wraps up, it’s going to be good. 

If we’re lucky, maybe the vanishing Starbuck will reappear as the “harbinger of death.”

Can I wait a year to see how this all resolves? It’s going to be a long year, that’s all I’m gonna say.

May 14th, 2009 | Tags: Lost | Category: Television | Comments (1)

Gotta love this made up “Thundercats movie” trailer. Using some great CGI they have made Thundercats out of Brad Pitt, Vin Diesel, and Farscape’s Chiana:

March 23rd, 2009 | Category: 1980s, Retro Sci-Fi | Leave a comment

Well, at least that’s one serialized show I can check off my “to watch” list. Battlestar Galactica is done. Was it worth it? Was the finale all it was cracked up to be?

I’ve read some of the responses online and it seems there are quite a few pissed of BSG fans out there, notably for the angelic “deux ex machina” aspect of the ending. I can’t say I was disappointed in the finale, but I do feel there were a few things that could have been done better. (And hey, it could have been much, much worse.)

First off, I don’t mind that Baltar and Caprica Six’s mental alter egos were “angels” so much – but I still would have preferred this explanation to have something more to do with the Cylon technique of projection. And why those two? It’s not like Caprica Six and Baltar were given information from Head Six or Head Baltar that significantly changed the destinies of everyone.

But as for Starbuck – her being an angel or ghost was pretty damn lame. I fully expected her existence to be explained by some sort of left-over Resurrection ship orbiting Old Earth somewhere. So no, rather than using this much more interesting and plausible explanation, we find out she’s just a ghost – who happens to be confused and needs hints from Hera of all people – and who can physically fly physical ghost ships. Lame, lame, lame.

And of course, this all begs the question – if God is going to use ghost Starbucks and visions of Caprica Six to push forward His Great Godly Agenda, why let the holocaust of the Colonies happen in the first place?

And why was there any need to seed New Earth with Cylon/Human Hybrid blood in the form of Hera? Why not just send an angel down to the tribes and teach them some language skills?

Better yet – send a big black monolith down there ala 2001 and let that do the job.

I was glad, however, that we did finally have some sort of tie-in to our Earth. And going 150,000 years back into the past was just as good as any tie-in possible.

Question: Are they leaving the door open for a modern-day Galactica spin-off, where the Centurions return to New Earth and terrorize us humans? Possible. If that happens, can we have Head Six and Head Baltar (the angels) come back? Because at least those two are interesting.

Missed: I would have liked to see the return of Lucy Lawless as Deanna. And I would have liked more resolution between Starbuck and Leoben (Number Two). Leoben was always prophesizing things…and he was always so captivating to watch. He was definitely underutilized this last season.

At any rate, I’m not entirely disappointed – at least we had a happy ending of sorts. After watching that grim, dark show for so many years, I was glad that there was at least some sort of hopeful resolution. I’m semi-satisfied, but that’s only partially because I didn’t have huge hopes for the ending.

Now, if Lost gives us some lame loose ending like that one, I will be super pissed. Can you imagine? What if we find out that the Lost island is really just run by supernatural beings, and Richard Alpert is Satan. Ugh!

But this is all just a reminder that sometimes the question is more compelling than the answer.

I give the finale a B+.

March 21st, 2009 | Tags: Battlestar Galactica, Lost | Category: Television | Comments (1)

Are you rushing out to see Watchmen tonight? I have decided to wait until it comes out on DVD. I generally get a good sense of a film from the trailers, and my feeling on it is that it will be so-so. There’s something about the quality of the atmosphere that doesn’t quite feel right for me in the snippets I’ve seen. It seems that Watchmen has gotten a few negative reviews already as well. With a down economy and movie tickets costing over $10/pop (sometimes just for a matinee here), I think I can wait. I could be wrong, though!

If you’ve seen it, please let us know if it’s worth the theater price!

March 6th, 2009 | Category: News | Comments (1)

I was reading this excellent round-up of Wednesday night’s Lost episode, and then I realized I actually know this guy! He’s someone I used to comedy improv with!

I can’t really improve upon that article much, but I will add my own brief two cents: I think the big statue (and old temple) that have been seen by the time travelers does confirm my theory that the Lost island is Atlantis.

I’m still having Lost time traveling dreams, by the way. Boy, does that show ever get under my skin!

March 6th, 2009 | Tags: Lost | Category: Television | Leave a comment

If the first episode of Season 5 of Lost bored you, then you are either not a fan or just a TV critic watching it because you have been forced to. As Lost’s creators explained in the pre-show, we are now finally at the point in Lost where more questions will be answered than asked, and that has to be exciting for any true Lost fan.

SPOILER ALERT: Alert your eyes from here on out if you haven’t watched this on your DVR yet!

For me, the major revelation in this episode was that the characters could get physically dislodged in time. Daniel Faraday, the physicist who is seen it the beginning of the show back in the Orchid station circa 1980, likens the time shifting to be like a record skipping.

For many years now fans have been wondering what the true key to the island was, and this has to be it. Time is what Lost is about, which is why flashbacks were integral in the show’s first seasons. Now we can see that time travel is perhaps what will explain most of the strange happenings on the show, from the Black Rock being stuck in the middle of the jungle to the appearances of Jack’s father. (Somehow, I suspect, dead people walking around like the living will have something to do with the time travel.)

My brain was working on so much overdrive from the idea that I had Lost dreams last night, dreams in which I was a woman from the 1970s but kept appearing at different moments in time here in the civilized world. I could not remember, however, exactly where I was from, and I felt considerable confusion as I kept finding myself in the same house but in a different decade. In one scene from my dream (because it was seriously like a television show), I was getting ready in this house, which used to be mine in the 1970s, but was now owned by new people in the present day. The new owners thought I was an intruder. Then a large group of people started to gather at the house at a particular time period, because we’d all gotten dislodged somehow and this became the focal point.

The underlying theory in such time travel is that all time is simultaneous, but we only perceive it to be separate. Thus, it would be possible to exist at other points in time simply because all time is here, now, overlapped with all other time.

One thing that I am thankful for is that Lost is not trying to work in time paradoxes. Faraday clearly states that history cannot be changed, that we can “jump along the string” but not change it, no matter what we do. “What happened, happened.”

This is a thankful respite from all the ridiculous time travel sci-fi out there, made possible by 50 zillion time paradox episodes in the Star Trek shows (most notably Voyager) and the Terminator franchise.

We also find out in the premiere episode that the wheel that dislodges the island from space-time was buried underneath it before the Dharma Initiative arrived, which then begs the question: Who put it there? Aliens? Or Atlanteans? Because it’s entirely possible we’ll find out that the island is, indeed, the mythical Atlantis, with the Others as the only survivors of whatever holocaust dislodged it from regular space and time in the first place.

You’ll find some excellent predictions as to what will happen this season over at Slate.

January 22nd, 2009 | Tags: Lost | Category: Television | Comments (1)

It took me a while to get into the new Battlestar Galactica. I did no t initially like the dark flavor of the show, and some of the obvious Americanisms have bugged me and kept me from fully getting into the BSG universe. It wasn’t until last season that I found myself getting “hooked” on it. One weekend when I needed a break, I sat and watched BSG for two days straight. While there are still a few things about the show that keep this from being an all-time favorite, I do find many aspects of the plot and arching storyline to be quite fascinating and compelling.

(Caution: BIG spoilers from here on out!) More »

January 19th, 2009 | Tags: Battlestar Galactica | Category: Television | Comments (1)