W.

An interesting, if somewhat blinked view on one of the most controversial presidents that the USA has seen. I too was a little perplexed that the film concentrated solely on the Iraq war for the segments set during his presidency, but I realised that Oliver Stone was not trying to make a documentary. There are plenty of those about Bush Jr. already. Stone is trying to show the man behind the presidency.

I really really hope that the characters of Cheney and Rumsfeld are exaggerated, because if they're like that in real life, then the world is a far scarier place than I thought it was. Cheney is portrayed as some kind of sinister puppet master, pulling at W's strings, and Rumsfeld comes across as someone you'd normally see in a straight jacket.

Probably the most disturbing part is when the group are in the situation room and discussing the invasion of Iraq. Colin Powell's desperate attempts to bring some kind of sanity to the situation, repeatedly pointing out that Bin Laden is hiding in a cave in Pakistan somewhere, and being told by Dick Cheney that the American people want revenge for 9/11 and don't particularly care if Iraq was involved or not.

The special features are well worth a look. They too are shorter than I'd have liked, but are very interesting, especially the section about how many believe that Bush nearly broke the American government system by assigning too much power to the executive branch. There's not too much about the breakdown of intelligent gathering that lead to the invasion, except to say that it is incredulous that the US military would defer to a report from British intelligence, which came from a single source, rather than their own intel gathering network which was actually contradicting that report.

Angels & Demons

Brief Review

Saw this at the weekend with my sister. It's good. I enjoyed the first one, and I liked this one. It's a tad darker in places, both in story, visuals and physical lighting.

Soundtrack is a bit over the top at times, otherwise it's well scored.

Still think I liked the first one better, the mystery was done with a little more thought, but overall it's very enjoyable. Critics are saying that Ron Howard has managed to make running between a museum and a church seem exciting. Which is kind of a stupid flaw to pick upon, since plenty of entertaining films involve a race between a researcher and 'the bad guy'.

Ewan McGregor is very good in this, easily outshining Tom Hanks. Female lead is fairly forgettable.

Score: B-
Entertaining, worth a watch and has a brilliant climax.

OQ:
I'm sure you will serve him wisely.
I will serve him briefly...

Star Trek

Disclaimer: This review may be coloured by the fact that I had organised to see this on Saturday with friends, only to be thwarted by a dodgy electrical fault in Cineworld's emergency lighting system which closed the multiplex for most of the day. You'll have to use your own judgement on this matter.

I just know I'm going to get flamed for this......

There's a lot to like about the new Star Trek film. The ships look AMAZING. The special effects are brilliant. The new transporter effect in particular is very nice. The acting of the main cast is superb, and the jokes are well paced, appropriate and kept in line. McCoy in particular is excellently portrayed. The action is....actiony. It's full of whizz bang poppery. It's very well done, is what I'm trying to convey.

Sadly, as a Trekkie, there's also a lot not to like.

When it comes to breathing new life into a series, there are four commonly recognised way to do it:

• Spin-off In a spin off you create a new show based on characters or concepts from the old show. Sometimes works well (Stargate: Atlantis, CSI, and of course Star Trek itself), sometimes is a horrendous mistake (Joey or Team Knight Rider*).
• Rebrand Replace some or all of the principle cast, possible alter the name slightly and relaunch in a new season. Can be fantastic (Stargate SG-1), can also be a disaster (SeaQuest 2032**).
• Reboot Reset the universe and declare that the original show does not exist in this context. This is probably the trickiest to pull off, but can reap the most benefits because it doesn't have to concern itself with canon rules established in the original and can tell the stories the way it wants to. Best example would be Battlestar Galactica, but also Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (which ignores Terminator 3).
• Revamp In a revamp, you still create a new series, but tell the stories in a different format while keeping the original series "canon". In other words, you bring the series "up to date". Examples would be Enterprise, which revamps the Trek universe, but keeps everything that follows it chronologically essentially intact. The new Knight Rider is another example. Both old and new Knight Rider were set in the time they were made, so they reflect the culture at the time, but they both exist in the same timeline.

The trouble I have with the new Star Trek film, is that it is trying to revamp and reboot itself at the same time. And I'm not sure, but I think it may be throwing in a little rebranding into the process too.

I think if this film had just been about Kirk, Spock and McCoy's first mission, I would have accepted it more, even if the ship looked different, because it would have been a revamp. Or if they'd decided to ignore all of Trek canonicity and reboot the series, I'd have been fine with that too. But in creating what is a highly tenuous link to the Trek we all know, they've tried to have their cake and eat it too.

Why is this a problem, you may ask. Well, it's because Star Trek fans are geeks, and it is here that I must digress into a brief side alley. As long as there has been Trek, there has been a divide between Trekkies and Trekkers. No-one will be able to tell you the difference, because frankly no-one really knows. Kate Mulgrew, Leonard Nimoy and Gene Roddenberry all had radically different ideas, but the way it was explained to me was Trekkers are fans of the original TV show (and films). Trekkies are fans of all of Star Trek. Because of the events that follow Star Trek: Nemesis, creating an alternate timeline, for many Trekkies, is sacrilege. Because it either implies that the events leading up to and after Nemesis are no longer going to happen, or that the events you are currently watching are part of a "doomed" timeline that the future Federation is going to correct. However, for Trekkers, this isn't a problem because they largely ignore everything that happened after the original series. So time travel that undoes everything after Kirk's era isn't a issue for them.

And that's the problem. Time travel in a Star Trek film. It's got to be the biggest cliché imaginable, and they don't do it well.

And it's not just that. The film is full of absurd plotholes. A transporter that can compensate for a ship travelling at warp speed, but can't deal with someone accelerating through gravity. While Zachary Quinto's Spock is excellent 90% of the time, the 10% of the time it doesn't work, it really doesn't work. I can accept a Spock emotionally compromised by the destruction of his home world, but a Spock that is engaged in a romantic relationship?

Star Trek doesn't just ignore Trek canon (which I would have been fine with), it also ignores the physical rules of the universe already described in detail. So you've got warp drive that behaves more like Star Wars' hyperdrive, you've got shields that don't seem to do anything, you've got phaser pistols which for the first time in history seem to have a recoil and you've got a transporter that operates on a range of different principles during the film depending on what it needs to do to progress the plot. Perhaps one of the most obscure ideas introduced is that the viewscreen on the bridge is now literally a window.

This entire argument may sound very beardy, but we are talking about Star Trek fans here. We are some of the beardiest people on the planet, and enjoy nothing more than debating philosophical differences between the series, testing each others' knowledge of all things Trek and generally trying to out-beard each other; a task which I regularly outshine my peers at, much to the dismay of my mother who hasn't quite given up hope of being a grandmother one day.

This film is like Never Say Never Again. It's James Bond, and yet it's not James Bond. It features familiar characters, and yet is missing equally essential characters. It's instantly recognisable, yet at the same time it is weird and foreign.

So while I cannot say for certainty that I liked the film (I honestly don't know), it does raise some difficult questions for me. Which as a Star Trek fan is brilliant, because it means I get to argue with people on the Internet***.

Score: [error]
I'm planning to see this again on Wednesday. That should say something about the film. Although your guess is as good as mine as to what it says.

OQ: I take it you have prepared new insults?

*I still get a bad taste in my mouth when I think about Team Knight Rider. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, the worst television show I have ever watched and the people responsible should be hunted down and shot.
**Actually SeaQuest did this at the start of both season 2 and 3 when they changed cast members. It's just that the rebrand at the start of season 3 was so much bigger and managed to wreck the original concept so utterly.
***I can actually hear my mother's groan of despair at that concept, which is quite a feat because she's 450 miles away.