Tag: Star Trek

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Dispatch War Rocket Ajax to Time Warp Drive-In’s FUTURECOOL

Welcome to Mongo, Earth man.

This month’s Time Warp Drive-In is devoted to 80s space opera. The term comes, believe it or not, from Westerns. In particular, elaborately staged Westerns in the middle of the 20th century came to be known derisively as “horse operas,” and the term kind of migrated over to movies like This Island Earth. The post Star Wars period of 1977-1984, where studios were greenlighting big-budget sci-fi left and right, no matter how poorly conceived, was the golden age of space opera, and there was none more operatically staged than Flash Gordon.

George Lucas had wanted to license Alex Raymond’s comic strip character from the 1930s, Flash Gordon, for his followup to American Graffiti. But Italian mogul Dino De Laurentiis wouldn’t sell, so Lucas ended up creating Star Wars instead. De Laurentiis, who didn’t get to be a rich and famous movie producer by ignoring cultural trends or letting good taste get in his way, decided it was time to exploit the intellectual property he had been sitting on and make a Flash Gordon movie of his own.

After a false start with director Nicholas Roeg, and a hard pass from Fredrico Fellini, of all people, he hired Mike Hoges to direct. Playgirl model Sam Jones was cast as Flash, but by far the best casting decision in the whole project was Max Von Sydow as Ming the Merciless. In the comic and the classic Saturday matinee serials, the ruler of Mongo has an icky, yellow, peril vibe. Von Sydow, who got his start with Ingrid Bergman in Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal, transcends that to makes Ming both truly alien and kinda charming, in a sadistic space tyrant kind of way.

Dispatch War Rocket Ajax to Time Warp Drive-In’s FUTURECOOL (2)

With Star Wars, Lucas set out to create a visually believable space opera. Flash Gordon attempts to emulate its source material — which is to say, comics of the 1930s and 40s. You might think the whole thing look irredeemably cheesy, and you’d be right, but you have to admit they achieved what they set out to do.

But admit it, we’re all just in it for the Queen soundtrack, which is absolute perfection. Let’s roll that theme song.

Dispatch War Rocket Ajax to Time Warp Drive-In’s FUTURECOOL

Speaking of classically trained actors going over the top, the second film of the evening is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Widely regarded as the best big-screen Trek, it cements Khan Noonien Singh as Captain James T. Kirk’s arch enemy.

So many things passed from this classic into the larger culture. “Kobayashi Maru” became geek slang for a no-win situation, and the “Genesis Wave” sequence, a Lucasfilm masterpiece of early CGI, was recently referenced in Dark Phoenix. But Ricardo Montalbán steals the show from William Shatner, and the folks at Paramount who made this 1982 trailer, knew it.

Dispatch War Rocket Ajax to Time Warp Drive-In’s FUTURECOOL (3)

The final film of the evening is Masters of the Universe, which stars Dolph Lundgrin as toy superhero He-Man in what is probably his finest role, and Academy Award nominee Frank Langella as Skeletor in what is definitely not his finest role. Is it so bad it’s good? You be the judge.

Dispatch War Rocket Ajax to Time Warp Drive-In’s FUTURECOOL (4)

Time Warp starts at dusk at the Malco Summer Drive-In on Saturday, August 17. 

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Star Trek Day Beams Into Shelby County This Weekend

It was August, 2014, County Commissioner Steve Mulroy’s last day in office. As his final official act, the lawmaker convinced his colleagues to declare April 9, 2015 Shelby County Star Trek Day. The event was a success, and the next year Commissioner Reginald Milton made it a permanent entry on the county calendar. We are the only municipality in the world to have an official regular celebration of Trek.

But why Star Trek? “The original Trek was pathbreaking for its portrayal of people—and aliens—of all races and genders working together harmoniously,” says Mulroy, now a University of Memphis law professor. “The spinoff series have continued to explore social issues in a way only science fiction can.”

The fifth annual Star Trek Day celebration will kick off at 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 6th at Craft Republic restaurant at 5101 Sanderlin. The afternoon program will feature a talk on real life space exploration by former NASA ground controller Bill Weppner, costume and trivia contests, and a March Madness bracket to determine the greatest Trek villain of all time. Mulroy, who is a proponent of instant runoff elections, will use the opportunity to demonstrate the alternate voting system as fans vote for the Best Episode Ever. And for the first time, your humble Memphis Flyer columnist will be appearing at Star Trek Day, discussing the new CBS series Star Trek: Discovery with Nerd Nite moderator James Weakley.

Craft Republic will be offering the assembled Trek fanatics Romulan Ale, Klingon Blood Wine, and tranya. We’ll let 7-year-old Clint Howard explain what tranya is, with this clip from the 1966 Star Trek episode “The Corbomite Maneuver”.

Star Trek Day Beams Into Shelby County This Weekend

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Holiday Blu Ray Offerings Get Weird with Twin Peaks, animated Star Trek and Twilight Zone

Looking for a gift for the cinephile in your life? Tired of your Blu Ray player sitting alone on the shelf? Need more stuff to binge watch? Three new releases of classic TV shows will fill stockings to satisfaction this season.

Twin Peaks: The Original Series, Fire Walk With Me, and The Missing Pieces

You may have heard that David Lynch and Mark Frost’s groundbreaking series will be getting a long-overdue sequel in 2017, so now’s the time to remember what went on with a total rewatch. This 9-disk set collects the whole donut: All 30 episodes of the original series, complete with introductions by The Log Lady; Fire Walk With Me, the 1993 film that explored the surreal backstory behind Laura Palmer’s last night on Earth, and more deleted scenes and alternate takes than anyone but the most devoted fans—and there are many of them—want to watch.

The original series was shot on film, so the HD remastering looks pristine. And when you revisit the show, or visit for the first time, you’ll be amazed at how many of the innovations attributed to the current “Golden Age of Television” came from the mind of Lynch: persistent season-long storylines, haunting “true crime” narratives, and cinematic visuals just to name a few. Your rewatch may also reveal just how good the whole package was. If you remember that the quality of the show dropped off after the premature revelation of Laura Palmer’s murderer midway through season two, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. And the final episode, which Lynch returned to personally direct, is among the most amazing hours of television ever created.

Star Trek: The Animated Series

2016 marked the 50th anniversary of the most beloved American sci fi series of all time. Star Trek ran for three seasons from 1966-69, ironically leaving the air shortly after the first moon landing. Trek’s devoted fans laid the groundwork for modern fandom, and the show got a brief second life in 1973 from Filmation, an animation company that got its start making cheap Bozo and Popeye cartoons. The animated series featured all of the original cast except for Chekov, who was replaced by a sexy feline humanoid named M’ress and a bizarre alien named Arex.

Filmation pioneered the limited animation style used by current cartoons such as Archer, and the remastered Trek visuals look both beautiful and clunky—often at the same time. Gene Roddenberry realized that the flexibility of the animated format would allow for much more creative visuals, including stranger aliens and elaborate, exotic planets. He brought back many of the writers from the Original Series, including legendary show runner Dorothy “D. C.” Fontana, whose episode “Yesteryear” fills in Spock’s backstory and set Vulcan lore that would remain in place for four more TV series and ten movies. David Gerold, the sci fi writer whose very first script was “The Trouble With Tribbles”, returned with “More Tribbles, More Trouble”. New Wave sci fi standout Larry Niven, hot off his hit novel Ringworld, wrote the episode “The Slaver Weapon”.

Filmation and Paramount might have had a more kid-focused series in mind, but the results are more in line with a straight up continuation of the Star Trek universe, keeping the dreams of spaceflight, discovery, and a tolerant, multicultural future alive.

The Twilight Zone: The Complete Series

Rod Serling is, without a doubt, one of the best screenwriters America has ever produced. Before the debut of “Where Is Everybody?”, the 1959 pilot of what would become The Twilight Zone, there was a legacy of horror and sci fi shows on radio and television, but Serling’s penetrating gaze into the human condition and his often gleefully perverse instinct for throwing his audience cognitive curveballs raised the bar for both the genre and the medium.

The complete Blu Ray collects all 126 episodes of the five seasons of the original Twilight Zone run from 1959-1964 on a whopping 24 discs. Serling had a good eye for talent, and he employed writers such as Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, and adopted stories from the likes of Ambrose Bierce. Guest stars in the ever-changing anthology cast include future space captain William Shatner, who was memorably terified by an airplane destroying gremlin in “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”; Burgess Meredith as a bookish survivor of nuclear holocaust in “Time Enough At Last”; and Dennis Hopper as a neo-Nazi haunted by the ghost of Hitler in the chillingly prescient “He’s Alive”. The set also includes interviews with cast and crew and extensive commentary by the author of The Twilight Zone Companion Marc Scott Zicree.

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Film Features Film/TV

Star Trek Beyond

It ain’t easy being a Trekkie.

From the beginning, we’ve been an aggrieved bunch. The fandom coalesced in 1968, when NBC threatened to cancel the original Star Trek after two seasons, prompting a “Save Trek” letter-writing campaign organized by sci-fi zines and word of mouth. It worked, but the third season had fewer classic episodes, which led to Trekkies discovering their other favorite pastime: Complaining about Star Trek.

In the 1970s, as Trekkies were successfully lobbying to have the first space shuttle named Enterprise, they backed series creator Gene Roddenberry’s quest to create a new series. After the tremendous success of Star Wars, those ideas were transported onto the big screen for 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Trekkies were gleeful, because not only did they have new Trek to watch, but, since many found the film to be ponderous and self-important, they also had new stuff to complain about. For director Nicholas Meyer’s 1982 sequel, The Wrath of Khan, the haters were drowned out by the cries of Trekkies grieving for the death of Spock. When the franchise (and Leonard Nimoy, who had his own love/hate relationship with Trek) gave them what they wanted and brought Spock back to life in the third installment, Trekkies declared that “odd-numbered Trek movies are always bad.”

Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted in 1987, and for the first two seasons, Trekkies, who were tuning in religiously every week, hated Captain Picard. Then he was assimilated by the Borg, and everyone decided they had always loved him and please don’t take him away. And so it went for 25 seasons of four consecutive spin-off series until Enterprise went off the air in 2005 just as it was getting good.

Sofia Boutella (left) as Jayla and Simon Pegg as Scotty in Star Trek Beyond

At this point, it probably will not surprise you to learn that I was less than impressed with the two J.J. Abrams-directed reboot films, Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek Into Darkness (2013). Sure, they looked good, and the new crew, led by Zachary Quinto as Spock, was well cast, but the writing—done by the same team who wrote Transformers—was just downright stupid. Abrams ditched Roddenberry’s techno-utopian humanism in favor of post-9/11 paranoid cynicism. The tenor of the times was not a good fit for Trek.

So it was with considerable trepidation I approached Star Trek Beyond. Abrams jumped ship for Star Wars, but his replacement is Justin Lin, best known for three Fast & Furious movies. The screenplay is by Simon Pegg, the comedy writer behind Shaun of the Dead, who is also returning for his third go-round as Scotty. Pegg’s script elevates Star Trek Beyond to the best Trek movie since 1996’s First Contact. Chris Pine’s rendition of Captain James T. Kirk has been the weakest link in the rebooted cast, but in the film’s opening scene, when Kirk’s diplomatic mission spirals into farce, Pine finally finds the handle on the character. Later, when a a rescue mission to an unknown planet turns into an ambush, the Enterprise crash lands, scattering the crew. Pegg’s script pairs off Spock and Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban), giving the two frenemies some great scenes together as they fight for survival in the alien wilderness. Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and Sulu (John Cho) both get meatier roles, and Idris Elba provides a credible villain with the fascist space vampire Krall.

Chris Pine as Captain Kirk


While the character moments are the best parts, Trek has never looked better. The frontier of the Federation doesn’t simply resemble rural California, and the gravity-bending design of Starbase Yorktown is an instant classic. The second-act space battle between the Enterprise and a swarm of Krall’s drones is visually inventive and harrowing. But, as the film progresses, Lin’s tics resurface. He puts Kirk on a motorcycle, his nervously roaming camera becomes tiresome, and he fumbles the climax, which seems to be on loan from Guardians of the Galaxy.

What Pegg and Lin get right is the sense of camaraderie among the diverse crew. Star Trek Beyond carries Roddenberry’s conviction that we can solve our problems by sticking together and applying equal parts compassion and logic, and its optimism is catchy.

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Intermission Impossible Theater

Star Trek in Concert?

Yes, Star Trek in concert. And I’m not talking about Spock Rock either.

On January 29 Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage is coming to the Orpheum Theater. Fans can see their favorite characters from the past 50-years of film and TV shows projected on the big screen while a live orchestra plays selections from the iconic soundtrack.

Star Trek in Concert?