A Time To Love, A Time To Hate
So, the new Star Trek movie. How awesome was it? Aside from a few minor niggles (how does a supernova threaten the entire galaxy?) it was a marvellous thing to behold. People who don't even like Star Trek have admitted to enjoying it. It has been the kick up the arse that the franchise has needed since - ooh - about season one of Enterprise. Of course it still remains to be seen whether or not this is a false dawn for the franchise or whether they can follow through on it.
It's strange that so much of Nemesis, that unloved entry (and justifiably unloved at that, it doesn't even have the sense of fun that The Final Frontier has) has revitalised Star Trek, most explicitly in the book line. Since Nemesis, the books - in particular the Next Generation line itself - seem to have been revitalised, almost becoming proper science fiction adventures instead of just 'Oh, it's only a Star Trek tie-in, this will do' hack jobs. It's also telling that a lot of writers who had in the past made Trek novels their bread and butter (Susan Wright, Dean Smith & Kristine Rusch, Diane Carey, LA Graf) all of whom had gone off the boil somewhat (Smith and Ruch's early Trek novels were somewhat magnificent, but then they quickly becamse shoddy rush jobs) have moved on to pastures new while leaving the cream behind (Peter David, Michael Jan Friedman - who admittedly has had his fair share of turkeys, but when given a decent deadline turns in solid work - JM Dillard) and introducing a new cadre, a lot of whom, it must be said started out with entires in the Strange New Worlds competition, not open to anyone living outside of the US. Led, it seems, by Keith RA DeCandido this new batch of young and aggresive writers (and when was the last time Trek writers were visibly trying to write a great book? In my humble opinion, it was probably back in the early days of the novels, when they weren't afraid of commissioning new writers or hiring hard sf stalwarts like Greg Bear and Vonda McIntyre). So, a good time for the novels. It's ironic, of course, that just as the Trek books get their act together the Doctor Who novels are reduced to the level of junior novelisations to tie in with the new series (especially since the New Adventures are still perhaps the high water mark for tie-in novels) with only a few eceptional entires (Gareth Robert's Only Human, Stephen Cole's Sting Of The Zygons and Justine Richards' Martha In The Mirror) among a range of books that are very rarely anything less than readable (the only true turkeys I can point to in the series are Stephen Cole's The Art Of Destruction and Mike Tucker's Snowglobe 7 - both authors who are responisble for above average entries - although Cole, it must be said, oscillates wildly between quality and dross, he works much better in an historial or present day context (his Timeless, for the EDA range was a true masterpiece) than a truly SF setting).
Autobots Assemble!
Other movies I have seen recently:
Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen - A big bag of candy, highly enjoyable to watch, ludicrously exciting, hilariously funny, Mega Fox looking even sexier than she did in the last movie, but so much happens in the two and a half hour running time that by the end of it you feel slightly sick. It's overwhelming, and shines with moments of brilliance. A true blockbuster, in the best sense of the word.
Terminator Salvation - There's nothing actually wrong with this film, it just doesn't offer up anything new (aside from a fight in Cyberdyne between Bale and - oh yes! - Arnie). Anton Yelchin - still a comedic highpoint as Chekov in the new Trek - gives us a pitch-perfect imitation of Michael Beihn, Christian Bale looks broody, Sam Worthington - the true star of the movie - rediscovers his humanity. But any film with Michael Ironside in, I'll watch. He was pretty much the only reason that seaQuest 2032 was anywhere near watchable.
Coraline - Fantastic, even if the 3-D elements did seem to be somewhat a last minute addition. As an adaptation of Gaiman it's more faithful to the text than Stardust, but perhaps lacking in that films heart.
Angels & Demons - I'm going to say out right now I haven't seen The DaVinci Code, but I did read the book before going to see this. I wasn't too bothered about seeing it, but Debra wanted to, so we did. I'm glad I read the book first. The film washes over everything, simplyfying things which didn't need simplyfying and complexifying others. And, although it cuts down on the soap operatics from the end of the book, it's still ridiculously over the top, and not in a good way.
Harry Potter 6 - And I'm glad I read the book of this before I saw it as well, because there's only about a hundred pages of it on screen, almost all towards the end. Everything else has been subsumed by an apparent desire to forefront the Ron-Hermione-Lavender love triangle and the burgeoning Harry-Ginny romance. Tonks and Remus' troubles aren't even referred to (the one scene in which they appear they are already a happy couple) and the film lacks even the soporific pace of the first two films. It comes as a shock following TOotP, which was by far the most cinematic of the films to come to something that looked like it was edited by a monkey who wanted as much Lavender as possible (who at least is as annoying as she is in the book) and didn't care about the big arc, namely the escalating paranoia among the wizarding community and Harry's own increasing belligerance.
And Now, The News
Yes. It's true, me and Debra have split up. A month and a bit ago, as it goes. We'd spent a wonderful weekend together. I'd worked all weekend previously so that Natalie could ahve the Sunday off, so I was off Saturday - Monday. We'd gone to Durham on the Saturday, looked round the Cathedral, Debra had bought a lovely dress, we'd had a bit of a drink and watched The Abyss on the night and then headed out to the pictures on Sunday. I'd stayed over again on the Sunday night, she'd dropped me off in Sunderland on Monday morning with an 'I'll see you tomorrow,' for the quiz.
That afternoon I got a text from her saying that she didn't feel about me the same way I felt about her. Which was upsetting to say the least.
Now, six weeks later, it doesn't hurt so much. Of course there's still this hollow feeling at times, but I'm moving on. I'm determined not to let this get me down as much as it did last time.
But she still has a fair few DVDs I left over there. That does piss me off.
Peace out.
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