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The Best of All Possible Worlds? The Legacy of the Borg…

Earlier today I posted a retrospective of The Best of Both Worlds, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary this month. I discussed how it managed to basically rewrite the Star Trek rulebook, introducing the franchise’s most iconic villains since the sixties. However, I’ve always found the Borg, those utterly terrifying cybernet hive-minded creatures, fascinating for another reason: they are a text book example of how a long-running franchise can take a viable and fascinating antagonist and then run them into the ground.

Why Borg?

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The Best of Both Worlds: A Retrospective

I am Locutus – of Borg. Resistance – is futile. Your life, as it has been – is over. From this time forward, you will service – us.

– Locutus introduces himself

I only found out last week that The Best of Both Worlds is twenty years old this June. For those unfamiliar with the title, it’s the two-part episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which represented both the franchise’s first real cliffhanger (there was a two-part episode of the original series, but that was simply to incorporate a framing device around the original unaired pilot, The Cage – which featured an (almost) completely different cast) and the first real showcase of perhaps the franchise’s most iconic antagonists, the Borg. It’s also a damn good two hours of television.

Picard could always spot a square...

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Non-Review Review: The Lovely Bones

There are somethings you can’t put a positive spin on. The rape and murder of a fourteen-year-old girl is one of those things.

A little too lovely...

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In Good Humour: The Calamatous Case of the Comedy Classics…

The wonderful lads over at Anomalous Materials are running a tournament over the summer to find the best comedy of all time. Think of it as a world cup, for film nerds. However, the competition – like our quad-annual footie fest – has had its share of upsets. Most notable in an early round where Galaxy Quest triumphed over Some Like it Hot or the trumping of Arsenic and Old Lace by A Fish Called Wanda another day (the same day The General went home empty handed, losing to Mrs. Doubtfire) or Bringing Up Baby getting trounced by Little Miss Sunshine. There are more borderline cases, with The Apartment beating The Circus or The Great Dictator losing to The Graduate. However, the only victory for a “classic” classic film I could find was that of City Lights over A Christmas Story. This sparked a bit of discussion between those taking part (which is, in fairness, the rather wonderful thing about events like this), but it got us wondering: Is comedy a fickle mistress? Has what the audience expected from a comedy changed dramatically with the times? Are what many consider to be “classics” of the genre subject to this winds of change and popular taste?

Modern Times are tough for Charlie...

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Trailer Park

I was delighted over the weekend to be asked to take part in a joint blog post with the rather wonderful Frank over at the Pompous Film Snob, outlining my favourite trailer and why. The article’s well worth a look and features some fantastic contributions. There’s a lovely selection right there. Anyway, he got me in the trailer frame of mind and I thought I’d maybe just post some of my favourite trailers for non-movie-things here, as a kind of a spin-off.

This post is rated "A" for awesome...

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A Matter of Time – Doctor Who: Season 5

Sorry… Sorry! Dropped it!

Hello, Stonehenge! Who takes the Pandorica, takes the universe. But bad news everyone… cause guess who! Listenw you lot, cause you’re all whizzing about – it’s really could distracting. Could you all just stay still for a minute? Because I. am. talking!

Now, question of the hour: who’s got the Pandorica? Answer: I do. Next question: who’s coming to take it from me?

C’mon!

Look at me: no plan, no backup, no weapons worth a damn – oh, and something else I don’t have? Anything to lose! So if you’re sitting up there in all your silly little spaceships with your silly little guns and you’ve got any plans on taking the Pandorica tonight, just remember who’s standing in your way; remember every black day I ever stopped you; and then – and then! – do the smart thing: let somebody else try first.

– The Doctor, The Pandorica Opens

Well, the first season of Stephen Moffat’s run of Doctor Who is over. And what a ride it was. On one hand, you had budget cuts at the BBC, putting an even great financial strain on the show’s transition to high definition, the first wholsecale chance of the entire cast between seasons since the show’s transition to colour in 1970 (and, fittingly, this was the show’s transition to high definition), and you had the World Cup skewing ratings towards the backend of the season. On the other hand, you had the writer of some of the show’s best episodes directing the entire run behind the scenes, the exploration of the time travelling nature of the central protagonist, and a blatant admission that the show is more a fairytale than a science fiction epic. And along the way, there was barely enough time to catch your breath.

No time to lose...

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Non-Review Review: Get Him to the Greek

I quite enjoyed Get Him to the Greek. It wasn’t quite as wonderfully put together as Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but it’s a pleasant little comedy that treads familiar ground, but in a witty and confident manner. The movie isn’t exactly a laugh-a-minute, it is one of the better major releases so far this summer.

Aldous is about to have his world rocked...

Note: My brother and correspondent, Ciaran, reviewed the film earlier in the week. My thoughts aren’t too different than his – save a few details here or there (I maybe liked it a tiny bit more). It’s well worth a read.

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In This Day and Age? The IMDb/DoB Fiasco…

Sometimes I’m amazed at how Hollywood works. Sometimes I’m disappointed. This time, I’m both. Part of me enjoys the stories tear open the seedy underbelly of how Hollywood really operates and reveals the sort of corruption that would make a hard-drinking monologuing private detective blush. Paying Variety to make a negative review disappear, for example. Now it appears that actors are fighting the geeky paradise of the Internet Movie Database in order to get their dates of birth removed from the pages.

According to his resume, he's only 27...

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Non-Review Review: Daybreakers

It’s great when film makers find something original enough to play with. Daybreakers takes an intriguing little snippet most of us have probably had and dismissed while watching a cheap vampire film – “what would happen if the vampires won and became the dominant species?” – and stretches it out to a two-hour film. It’s a movie that’s bristling with all sorts of witty ideas, but the problem is that it never really takes the opportunity to lift itself out of the “trashy B-movie” category of vampire and futuristic military films. While there are some great notions and concepts at play here, they aren’t executed with a hint of finesse, instead played with the sort of skill you traditionally find in a hackneyed slasher movie. Which is a damn shame, because when the movie hits the right buttons, it really works.

Blood work...

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Is Film Criticism Ever Objective? Can Disliking a Film Ever Be Wrong?

Toy Story 3 seems to be pretty much universally loved. I say ‘pretty much’, because there are currently two negative reviews on-line about it. To put that in context, that’s two negative reviews out of nearly one-hundred-and-fifty on Rotten Tomatoes. As always happens with this sort of thing – reviewers expressing a ridiculously unpopular opinions – this has prompted a bit of a reaction on-line:

They rail against anyone who likes it, happily sitting alone on their bitter, hate-filled island. An island of wrong. Hundreds of film critics have proclaimed their love for Toy Story over the course of three movies and the two baldies who hate it can’t really tell us why. Most of the time film is subjective. This time it’s not.

So, is film criticism ever objective? Can an opinion ever be wrong?

Can you believe the Buzz about this film?

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