Thing 92 Done!!!

For my US Road Trip - which is now only two weeks away!!! - I bought myself a wind-up torch yesterday... And then it suddenly dawned on me that that was one of my 101 things, Thing 92.

I guess that there's not much you can say about it apart from that. It's a nice little torch. And it's powered by me! So yeah.

I fly to New York two weeks tomorrow. Where did the last ten months go?

Terminator Salvation

The absolute best thing about Terminator Salvation is the flawless digital cameo towards the end of an actor who was associated with the first three films but not with this new franchise.

I say new franchise, because there is absolutely no way that I will ever think of it as being part of the original franchise (I have a hard enough job considering Rise Of The Machines to be canon sometimes). Previously the films - especially T2, my personal favourite - were about fantastic sequences and special effects welded with interesting, dynamic ideas and plot. Salvation had the effects, and at times it even had the ideas but the plot and script let the whole affair down with huge gaping chasms of logic and some terrible, terrible dialogue.

I wasn't even going to write about the film (the old adage, if you can't say anything nice...) but watching the magnificence of T2 yesterday really threw Salvation's shortcomings into stark relief.

Haiku

It's been some time since I posted haiku, but it doesn't mean that I've not been writing them. Here are the recent ones from the last month or so, which takes us up to 27 in total now.

A trick of the light,
The smile I thought I saw
Was not meant for me


We gambled our love
For the sake of a bad debt
And came up snake eyes


The end of the world
Is different for each man.
A personal fate


Your reassurance
And then my ego is maxed!
I can play outside


Faster and faster
And faster, resulting in
Your own disaster

Star Trek

Three weeks after I saw it, I finally get around to writing my thoughts on Star Trek. I've not been to the cinema as much as I would have liked so far this year, which means that when I say Star Trek is the best film I have seen so far this year it doesn't really have the impact that it should.

From start to finish, I really enjoyed it; I've seen it twice now, and on both occasions it was just a total joy to watch. The casting is very strong, and I think that the characters in the main roles all hit the bullseye when it came to performances, none of them straying into caricatures or impersonations, but still delivering what the audience expects and remembers in terms of the qualities that make up the characters. Zachary Quinto, in particular, excels as Spock - as does Leonard Nimoy, who binds together the franchise with an appearance that is more than merely fan-pleasing.

Criticisms can be made about the plot, particularly about the effects of red matter - whose properties could be helpfully summed up as "doing whatever the plot requires" - but in some ways that misses the point of the enterprise (pun intended). This is Star Trek, not hard sci-fi space opera - a criticism levelled at plot holes in the film also hits the many, many occasions over the years where Star Trek has put the story and the people ahead of the plot holes, and which have been successes because of it.

If it doesn't quite hit the emotional highs of Wrath of Khan or The Undiscovered Country it is certainly not for want of trying. This is a bold, primary colours, optimistic view of the future, a rebirth of a fantastic franchise and could very well go on to be my favourite film of the year.

The big question for me now is whether or not I can squeeze in a third trip to the cinema to see it again...