Dude Movies: Star Trek (2009)

What’s it about?
Alternate-universe Star Trek: The College Years crew team up to fight the evil Romulan evil plan of evil to destroy the universe out of spite, pretty much.

Any chicks in the movie?
Zoe Saldaña as Lt. Uhuru, who looks like Nichelle Nichols run through a Beyoncé brand hottifying machine.

Awesomeness Factor?
Warp 10. By all rights, the ancient and wheezing Star Trek franchise should have been hung out to dry a couple of decades ago, were it not for the life support granted by fandom’s most irritating dweebs.* Director and geek saviour J.J. Abrams, who can apparently do no wrong, wisely moves away from the dramatic inertia that’s plagued the series since The Next Generation days and replaces it with what Trek should have been all along: crazy-ass spaceman adventures in space. Abrams and his screenwriters understand that, at it’s core, Trek is really fucking stupid, so whenever the story calls for some patented Star Trek sci-fi twaddle like “I have opened the control valves to the matter-anti-matter nacelles”***, Abrams wisely decides to have the cast speak it as possible in order to get to more of the good stuff, like Kirk and Sulu swordfighting Romulans**** or watching entire planets blow up. They also make the indescribably wise decision to move away from the absolute dominance of the Kirk/Spock/McCoy dynamic to up the badass quotient for the rest of the crew, making it a more organic ensemble piece than the source material ever felt. The movie also looks great, too, positing a bright utopian future where spaceship bridge decks can be mistaken for an Apple Genius Bars and green-skinned chicks from Orion can really party. Given Abrams’ propensity for coating every corner of the screen in lens flare, watching this new, revitalized Star Trek is not unlike the feeling of being a baby and having a kindly uncle shake his keys at you. Sure, it’s juvenile, but you gotta admit those keys are shiny.

Mitigated by?
But speaking of the script: time-travelling through wormholes? Really? Ooooooh, I bet the next movie will have a holodeck mishap.

* Seriously, I’ve been a hardcore geek nerdboy my entire life and even I can’t stand Trekkies. They have this weird sense of both entitlement and superiority, which is ludicrous because Star Trek has the intellectual depth of Teenage Mutant Ninja** Turtles comic. They’re kind of like the nerdverse’s version of Republicans.

** I just wanted to write the word “ninja” again.

*** Original series, season 2, episode 22, “By Any Other Name”. Because even though I hate Star Trek, I also seem to have it memorized.

**** Not sure what the deal was with the Romulans, who aren’t styled as wild rage-o-nauts so much as slightly perturbed Tool fans. Also, note to Hollywood: face tats do not make people look edgy, it makes them look like gay bikers.

New to the Store: Week of 1 December

NEW RELEASES

Bellamy
Cook, Dane: Isolated Incident
Five Minutes of Heaven
Flame and Citron
Ghosted
Girl Seeks Girl
Into the Storm
Lost: Season 5
Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian
Pale Force
Redwoods
Shank
Somers Town
Terminator: Salvation
Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles: Season 2
Watchmen: Ultimate Cut

NEW ARRIVALS

Closer, The: Season 2
Closer, The: Season 3
Eagles over London
Golden Age of Television, The
Silent Night, Deadly Night: Parts 3-5
Three Men and a Cradle
Tora-San #1: Our Lovable Tramp
Tora-San #2: Tora-San's Cherished Mother
Tora-San #3: His Tender Love
Tora-San #4: Tora-San's Grand Scheme

BLU_RAY

Funny People
Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian
Terminator: Salvation

Dude Movies: NINJA ASSASSIN

What’s it about?
Korean pop sensation Rain is Raizo*, former member of a super secret ninja clan that is now trying to kill him because he accidentally showed weakness for like a second, except he's also trying to kill them because he's... NINJA ASSASSIN!!!

Any chicks in the movie?
Naomie Harris from 28 Days Later plays a Europol agent who believes ninjas are, like, totally real. No skin, because I guess between all of that shuriken sharpening and training montages ninjas don't have time for the nasty.

Awesomeness Factor?
Deadly high. Director James McTeigue, who previously made a miss-the-point adaptation of V For Vendetta, makes the smart decision to shoot NINJA ASSASSIN** like a horror movie, with the role of the monster replaced by an army of semi-supernatural ninjutsu who don't tend to stealth kill their enemies so much as eviscerate them from the shadows like a Ginsu knife demonstration gone horribly, horribly wrong. We are talking about a philosophically profound level of violence here - if you have a problem with the sight of flesh getting cut, sliced, diced, puréed, whipped, chained, beaten, shot, stabbed, gouged, and then cut some more just in case, then you have made a very poor movie-watching decision. NINJA ASSASSIN is to the cutting of human flesh as the Twilight series is to making 12-year old boys suddenly realize they're gay, by which I mean it happens about once every twelve seconds of the movie's runtime. The structure*** and the plot**** of the movie is laughable, and the acting from Korean pop sensation Rain is negligible.***** But quite frankly, anybody who goes to see this for anything other than watching ninjas fight the shit out of each other must clearly represent an epic marketing fail. Where it counts, NINJA ASSASSIN delivers the kind of ridiculously violent sword-fighting, shuriken-flinging, limb-lopping good time that I haven't seen since the heyday of NINJA III: THE DOMINATION. Just maybe pass on the popcorn for this one.

Mitigated by?
I forgot to mention the presence of Sho Kosugi, aka Bad-Ass Ninja Man Who Was In Every Ninja Movie Ever, as the leader of the evil ninja clan. Remember how he fights Rutger Hauer at the end of Blind Fury? Oh, Blind Fury. Where's your collector's edition DVD?

* Which is Japanese for "Korean pop sensation Rain".

** The title is too awesome to not type in all-caps every time.

*** Which is basically exposition, then ninja attack, then FLASHBACK! repeated ad infinitum.

**** OK, seriously: these ninjas show up and literally slaughter whole buildings full of people, lopping off their limbs and skulls like a knife going through really bloody butter and leaving every available wood surface impaled with throwing stars, and you're telling me Europol CSI can't do shit with that? Ninjas showed up in Vegas and William Peterson would have had those dudes on ice in like half an episode. Also, just a quick pointer for the next secret ninja clan that builds their secret hidden base on the secret side of a secret mountain: might want to block the only fucking road up there so that the ATVs full of soldiers can't just drive up.

***** Lucky for him the movie basically only really asks him to look brooding in the rain, which I gotta admit he's pretty good at. Maybe he can star in the Twilight spin-off about ninjas that twinkle.

New to the Store: Week of 24 November

NEW RELEASES

Amateur Porn Star Killer
Angels and Demons
Band, The
Christmas Tale, A (Criterion)
Four Christmases
Funny People
I Sell the Dead
Kobe: Doin' Work
Life on Mars (UK): Series 2
Lion's Den
Maiden Heist, The
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
Shorts
Watch Out
Wrecked

New Arrivals

Black Widow (1954)
Cheerleaders Wild Weekend
Hamlet (Kozintsev)
King Lear (Kozintsev)
Law of Desire
Show Me Yours: Complete Series

BLU-RAY

Angels and Demons
Bruno
Christmas Tale, A

THAT TIME HAS COME

It's the time of year that Gen X customers dream about... feverish, sweaty, strangely erotic dreams. It's time for the Gen X Anniversary Celebration!

It's almost the store's 15th birthday and we have some special bargoons lined up, with the always-anticipated Connoisseur Card sale first and foremost. Check it out, yo:

* 12-pack Connoisseur Cards are now only $36.00 (that's $3.00 per rental, as if it's half-price Monday all year long, or for as long as your cards last!). You can buy as many of the cards as you please, and they NEVER expire.

* All Used DVDs are buy 1, get 1 free.

* Come in Thursday, December 3rd, when all rentals are only $1.00!

* Every time you rent during the Anniversary Celebration, you are automatically entered to win a Blu-Ray player (a good one, too)!

THE ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION RUNS FROM NOVEMBER 20th THROUGH DECEMBER 5th. HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE!!

New to the Store: Week of 17 November

NEW RELEASES

Act of God
Ballast
Bruno
Cho, Margaret: Beautiful
Franklyn
Gomorrah (Criterion)
How to Be
Humpday
Is Anybody There?
Limits of Control, The
Moonshot
My Effortless Brilliance
My One and Only
My Sister's Keeper
Spongebob Squarepants: Truth or Square
Star Trek (2009)
Thirst
Tudors, The: Season 3

NEW ARRIVALS

Avant-Garde 3
Born Yesterday
Doctor Who: Enlightenment
Doctor Who: Mawdryn Undead
Doctor Who: Terminus
Downhill Racer
North Dallas Forty
Oklahoma!
Rainmaker, The
Russ Meyer's Abundant Beginnings (The Immoral Mr. Teas / Europe in the Raw / Eve and the Handyman / Wild Gals of the Naked West)
Save the Tiger
Star Trek: First Contact
Stargate SG1: Season 10
Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

BLU RAY

Gomorrah
Monsters, Inc.
Star Trek (2009)

Paint Yer Wagon!

So, I never thought I'd say this, but Clint Eastwood is quite a good singer. I must say I enjoyed Paint Your Wagon, a musical from 1969 that not only incorporates a male chorus, but also a three-way marriage, bawds and Eastwood singing a romantic ballad. Lee Marvin is boisterous and fun, and Jean Seberg is just as beautiful as she was 10 years earlier in Breathless.

This may or may not be the beginning of a series of short reviews done by yours truly, but if it is, then I hope you enjoy them :)