Review: Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)

A couple of weeks ago, I finally got to see Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011); I've been meaning to see it for some time now, especially with the next Transformers film due out this summer.  Unfortunately, it's been a while since I've seen it, so it's not entirely fresh in my head; but to be honest, that doesn't really change my outlook on the film.  I even missed the first 20 minutes, and I don't feel like I missed out anything.  That in itself should probably give you some indication of how good (or bad) the film is.

I recently listened to a podcast reviewing Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan; in it, the reviewers had the notion that maybe the producers were trying to "forget" The Motion Picture and start fresh with a new movie.  Thinking about Dark of the Moon, I really get that same sort of feeling: that the producers were trying to ignore the existence of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  Gone are the annoying "twins" (though replaced with equally annoying but less featured smaller Autobots) and Megan Fox.  Sam has a new girlfriend - whom apparently he loves and has always loved.  Some of the Decepticons are different - Megatron's form is changed, as is Soundwave's (Soundwave is definitely better this time around).  I did some reading, and apparently Michael Bay did acknowledge the poorly-received Revenge of the Fallen and made some decisions to reflect that, but in my view, he didn't go far enough.  Still, this movie fits the overall feel of the other two movies, so it's definitely not out of place.

Interesting to note - though I'm not sure how I feel about this - the Transformers seemed to be much more "organic" than ever before in that they bleed when injured.  It's a little strange - Transformers seem like they should be completely mechanical.  However, this helps to illustrate that they are alien beings from another world.  I just don't know if it worked for me or not.

Thematically, the connection to NASA here mirrors the first film.  I really appreciated that, and thought it added a nice touch to the film.  It makes the second film seem even further out of place, which lends more support to my theory that Bay just wanted to move on from the second film.

One of the more interesting aspects of the film's plot line was Sam's apparent existential crisis in the first half of the movie.  He's graduating from college and going for his first job - but he's saved the world twice now, so understandably he feels that an entry level position has no meaning for him and is beneath him.  It's a little God-complex-ish in the first two films - a coincidence almost - that he is so central to saving the world.  In this movie, I feel that he has less to do, and is actually held a little bit helpless / hostage to the Decepticons and can't really do much to affect the outcome of the film.  Wisely, it's the Transformers (and military-trained humans) who do the bulk of the saving the world.  I honestly forget how Sam figures into the end of the story, but I think he's satisfied or something.  Either way it's pretty clear that he's not important for the future of the franchise.

I liked that there were some bad humans in this movie.  I don't like that it was obvious who they were, but when you think about it, it makes sense that the Decepticons would coerce some of the less scrupulous members of society to get what they want.  After all, aren't the Autobots essentially doing the same thing by having the humans act as support for their fight against the Decepticons?  Of course there is a difference - the Autobots feel responsible for the humans, whereas the Decepticons use them as they see fit - and they see them as disposable.

Overall, this isn't a huge thinkpiece of a movie, but Transformers: Dark of the Moon gives you a bit more to chew on than the previous two installments.  I don't hold the same expectations for Age of Extinction, but come on - Dinobots!

Deep Space Nine: The Adversary

Full disclosure: Deep Space Nine is probably my favourite TV series; while TNG might be the Trek I grew up on, DS9 has always been my favourite.  It's a shame that I never watched it during the original run (until the later seasons) and had to watch it as re-runs.  It's also a shame that no network carries them in syndication that I know of - they instead prefer to show TOS, TNG, and Voyager.  Weird.  I think DS9 is very underrated.  I'm currently re-watching DS9 with Vanessa, mainly as an excuse to watch my favourite TV series.

Episode: The Adversary (Season 3, Episode 26 - S3 finale)

Written by Ira Steven Behr, Robert Hewitt Wolfe

Directed by Alexander Singer

The season 2 finale of DS9 really kicked off the whole Dominion plot line, which continued into the third season; season 3 was still rather episodic when compared to the latter episodes though.  The Adversary really kicked the Dominion plot into high gear.  The short version of the episode is that a Changeling (one of Odo's species, if you don't know) infiltrates the Defiant and attempts to start a war with an alien species in order to take the Federation out of the picture to ease an Alpha Quadrant invasion.  Surprise!  It doesn't work, but Odo learns of a very important fact: it's too late, the Changelings (also called The Founders) are everywhere.

As an episode, it was fantastic: the writing was on, all the character notes were great - but I wanted to highlight the technical aspects of this one, because I thought they were above and beyond the rest of season three.

Very often in Star Trek (and especially DS9), we're presented with a giant ship (or station), where the characters have tons of room to move around.  The Defiant, though, is a tiny ship in contrast.  It's designed to be highly maneuverable, and highly efficient.  The bridge is nice and big, and by necessity so is the engine room, but the rest of the ship is small.  It's basically a submarine in space.

The Adversary does an excellent job in depicting the size of the ship.  Camera angles were very tight and close, and the characters were put in some claustrophobic situations.  Unfortunately I don't think many other episodes featuring the Defiant use these techniques as well as The Adversary; ironically I feel that these tight shots really showcased the Defiant more than wide shots otherwise would have.

The other thing that was really neat were the lack of cuts from the camera.  I think this is directly related to the director (Singer) choosing to film the characters up close, so that when the camera needed to move to another area in the scene, it pulled back in a fluid motion - as if the viewer is the camera, and has to back up ever-so-slightly in order to survey more of the scene.  It was really neat.  But this also helped to simulate the effect of the Changeling watching the crew and being careful not to be noticed.

I don't normally notice these things, but I thought I needed to highlight these sneaky-but-awesome camera tricks in a well-written episode.  If you haven't seen this one, track it down - you won't be disappointed.

Review: Star Trek: The Next Generation: Dark Mirror

I finished this book a week ago (just in time to get Win Tie or Wrangle from the library), and I meant to write a review immediately after.  But then I forgot.  Woopsie!

Here are the basics: the USS Enterprise D, while exploring a really boring area of space in the outer reaches of the galaxy, gets pulled (sucked?) into the Mirror Universe.  If you're unfamiliar with the Mirror Universe at all, it would behoove you to do some reading before continuing on with this review.

To be honest, if you want to enjoy this book, be prepared to do a lot of waiting.  The beginning of the book takes a long time to get going, talking about nigh-uncomprehensible things like "hyperstrings" and some dolphin-like alien which makes very little sense whatsoever.  Seriously, Diane Duane, why not pick an alien species we're more familiar with?  All I could picture from the descriptions was a super-happy dolphin floating around in a space suit with robotic arms.  The scenes without him were much better.

Once we get into the meat of the story - which, to me, is when Picard beams over to the Mirror!Enterprise and help LaForge and Troi with their mission (which is to get them out of the mirror universe).  Once we get to this point, the plot moves around at a very good pace and the action is fun.  And then, where the novel should have ended, we get a chapter of the crew enjoying some sort of opera on the holodeck.  Uh...maybe that would work as a coda in the TV show, but it is utterly boring here (and I skipped it outright).

I only have two main beefs with this book.
1) The characterization seems a little off.  They talk completely different from how they would in the TV series.  This brought me out of the story a couple of times.*
2) The Mirror Universe is the same as we saw in the TOS episode Mirror, Mirror.  This is a beef for me, because the extrapolation of the MU's history seen in the Deep Space Nine episode Crossover is much more believable than what we get here.**

Other than that, I felt that the characters' actions were much more realistic than what we see on the TV show.  It feels like they're actually military officers (sorry, explorers) operating aboard a very complex starship.  I don't know how to describe it, but I guess it doesn't really feel like these guys are on the bridge 100% of the time.  Don't you find it odd in the TV show that we see the same bridge crew every episode?***

Anyway, it was an interesting enough read.  Three out of Five stars.  ALSO!  This ties in directly to a new creative project I'm working on.  Head over to http://tngxmen.tumblr.com/ for more details!

* - Granted, their personalities were almost bang-on for all the characters.  They just didn't talk properly.
** - I will grant that perhaps the mirror universe we see in this novel is a branch of the mirror universe we've seen on TV - where in this particular universe, Spock's efforts to bring civility to humans doesn't work and they remain as they were.  I think I'll take that explanation over the fact that they're the same universe as on TV.
*** - I think both TNG and Voyager have attempted to address this; the only episode that comes in mind is Data's Day and I think there's one episode on Voyager that puts Ensign Kim in command of the night watch or something. 

Alcatraz

You may or may not have heard of this new show on Fox from producer J.J. Abrahms called "Alcatraz"; if not, here's the premise: in March 1963, 300+ inmates and guards disappeared without a trace; now, in 2012, they're coming back.  And committing their original crimes on top of doing some mysterious dirty work for some higher power.

I've watched three episodes now (well, technically four since the pilot episode was really the first two episodes back-to-back), and I think that's enough to form an initial opinion.  I think I need to wait until I've absorbed the entire first season before putting together any official "review" of some kind, but here are some brief thoughts about the show so far:

• It's essentially a police procedural show, except it's got paranormal overtones and is funny
• Sam Neill
• I like fiction that takes historical events and puts a new spin on them, and I am a little excited for something as cool as Alcatraz
• No really, Alcatraz was this prison on an island that was next to impossible to escape from.  Can you think of a cooler premise for a TV show of this nature?
• Sam Neill
• They're spending equal time in 1960 and 2012.  They're giving us a lot of backstory on the criminals that the team is chasing down, and there has to be a reason for that - but what's the reason?
• This show has paranormal overtones - or does it?  Maybe time travel is involved?  That's not paranormal in my books.
• Sam Neill

I highly recommend this show - and I never watched Lost, so I'm not saying that you should watch this show based on that last show.  I hear though that the guy who plays Doctor Soto played a guy named Hurley in Lost, and maybe some people might like that?

You can watch Alcatraz Monday nights at 9PM EST on Fox, or be like me and watch it on CITY TV in Canada.

The Transporter Not Starring Jason Statham

I finally did a daily prompt and actually wrote something today.  Here's the prompt:

Prompt for Monday, July 25 2011:In whatever style/genre you like, spend at least 15 minutes writing something based on the following sentence:

A team of North American scientists have announced what they claim is the biggest technological break-through of the 21st century: they have created the first teleportation device capable of transporting organic matter from one point to another.

And here's what I came up with (after the break)

Star Wars: Death Star Review

So I finished Star Wars: Death Star last weekend.  The book was okay - it had its moments, but ultimately feels like a novelty item, so to speak.  The characters were fun enough, but not exactly what I'd hoped.  And the writing wasn't the greatest - there was a lot of repetition going on, mostly to reinforce themes and ideas, but it came across to me more as, "Okay, I know what you're saying - you've said it five times now, maybe you could move the story along?"

It was things like the Death Star gunner questioning his morals before/after pulling the trigger on Alderaan.  It seemed like I was reading the same passage several different times across five different chapters.  I don't want to give it away, but if you read it, you'll know what I mean.

Anyway, I was entertained, but slightly disappointed; my expectations going in was that this was a book comprised of short stories.  That's not what I got, but I only feel half-cheated.

It's a fun enough read, so I'm not going to say "don't read it"; instead, I'll just say that if you don't read it, you're not missing out on anything important.

BSG S04E19 - Daybreak, Pt 1

Battlestar Galactica has never failed to let me down.  And I even mean those times where I didn't like where the show was going, and the episodes were really preachy, or nothing happened in them (see: Islanded in a Stream of Stars).  BSG just goes and ramps things up another notch, and delivers a killer episode.

Caprica (Before the fall)

"Daybreak" is no exception.  While not much happened in this episode, it didn't happen in style.  If you know what I mean.  This was purely a character development episode - yes, that's right, the second last episode was developing characters.  We got to see some of the heroes (and the not-quite-heroes) in their original element as the episode opened with scenes from Caprica, likely only a few weeks (or months?) before the Cylons attacked.  We got to see what drove the characters before it was all about simply surviving.

Other than that, it was another pure setup episode.  No answers yet, but I am hoping we get those in the next episode (which is really sort of two episodes, as it's a two-hour long finale).  And it seems like BSG is ending the series on a strong note, going back to one of its core strengths from the early seasons: the impossible mission.

They have to go rescue Hera, in what is likely to be a suicide mission.  Galactica's last hurrah, I suppose.  Anyway, I really enjoyed this episode, even though it was just meant to set up the last part.  Like I said, it was really cool seeing the characters pre-war, worrying about things like Baltar's dad stabbing nurses (yes, this happened!).  Oh, and it was great to see Lee back in his Colonial uniform at the end.  'Bout time he ditched the suit, as good a story line as that is (or was).

Bring on part two...although bring it on when I have two hours to spare, please.

Quick Reviews

I recently read a couple of short stories, so I thought I'd give my thoughts on them.

First up, is Hunter, by Wil Wheaton.  I've obviously written about this story a short while ago, but unfortunately I couldn't read it the minute I downloaded it because I couldn't figure out how to get the story onto my Blackberry's e-reader app.  Thankfully I remembered that I have Stanza on my iPod Touch, and I reconfigured the settings on that thing and had the most amazing small-screen e-book experience in a long time.

Anyway, the story was good.  It starts off with a character in his element: a bounty hunter, I suppose you could call him, chasing prey in a futuristic world ruled by a mysterious alien race.  Mysterious only because we know very little about them other than that they are invaders.  And they invaded Earth.

The story quickly reveals that this hunter really ISN'T in his element, and, well - I don't want to spoil it, but his world does get flip-turned upside-down.  A very brief glimpse into a possible future by Wheaton, and it was good.  I want more.  So I give "Hunter" an A+.

Second story: I, Robot by Cory Doctorow.  This story originally appeared in a short story collection, so I'm not exactly sure how I downloaded JUST "I, Robot" and not that particular collection - but I did.  I started reading it a LONG time ago; it was sort of just something to fill time.  Unfortunately, I got a bit bored of it at the time because I didn't know where it was going.  Determined to finish it though, I opened it up again in Stanza and I remembered where I left off.

The story starts out simply enough: an experienced Detective in Toronto is on the chase for his daughter, who disappears following an explosion in a mall.  It's a futuristic world along the lines of the classic sci-fi novelists, so some of the descriptions might seem "familiar".  For instance, references to Eurasia and the Social Harmony remind me immediately of 1984 - but it's fairly apparent that this is a completely different world (which is a good thing).

I wasn't getting why it was titled "I, Robot" until the payoff at the very end.  I thought that was well-done.  However, for losing me a little at the beginning (I thought I was given a little too much information to handle), I'm going to have to give Cory a B+ on this one.

Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Vortex

I got this book for Christmas, and it's probably the first new Star Wars book I've read since I stopped reading the New Jedi Order series.  I was kind of getting tired of the whole "the universe is doomed we're killing everybody" tone that the books were taking.  I don't know when they moved on, but we're now 43 years after A New Hope.  I'll get to that timeline bit in a minute.

Anyway, I thought I'd do a short review series of the book.  In part one (this post), I take a quick look at the production quality put into the book and my first impressions.  Part two will be after I hit the mid-point of the novel, and part three will be my final impressions upon finishing it.  On we go...

Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Vortex: Episode I: First Impressions


Come on, I had to go with the "Episode" route for this.  Surely you saw it coming?

Vortex is written by Troy Denning, who is no stranger to the Star Wars novel universe.  Including this novel, he's written 18 Star Wars titles, which includes 10 novels, 2 eBooks, 2 short stories, and a few gaming-related stories.  Like many other SW authors, he's also got a lot of Fantasy & Science Fiction novels under his belt.  So I think it's safe to say that Denning knows what he's doing with a typewriter.  Specifically to Star Wars though, most of the stuff he's written has been set in the new universe (and I mean like 20+ years after Return of the Jedi), with a few set around the time of the novels written in the mid-90s.  This sounds confusing but what I'm trying to get at is that Denning is part of the "new blood" SW authors.

Onto the book itself; it starts off with a very detailed timeline of Star Wars novels.  This also doubles as a shopping list of books I want to buy now.  As I mentioned before, Vortex is set 43 years after A New Hope.  Assuming Luke is 18 in ANH, that makes him 61 now.  Or roughly what I assume Obi Wan Kenobi is in ANH.  Why is this important?  You'll see...

The book also follows the X-Wing series' example and includes a dramatis personae at the beginning.  It is very useful, especially to somebody who hasn't read a Star Wars book in quite some time.  Even though it just gives you the most basic information available, it helps paint a little picture of who is doing what in a universe that is still somewhat familiar, but very different.

The book itself has high production value: cool little graphics at the start of each chapter.  It's very easy to read.  The type is apparently called "Galliard" - see the write-up from the book here.  Actually, I thought that was also a neat inclusion, something that you don't often see.

OKAY now we can get to the story.  We start off with an excellent hook: Lando Calrissian (yessss) and Jaina Solo (daughter of Leia and Han) are floating in an old rustbucket of a ship - in the wrong system.  Aiming to arrive at Coruscant, they instead show up near Kessel.  Somebody has impersonated Lando's voice to redirect their flight path and generally disable their ship.  Who would do that?  Why would they do that?  I don't know, but it's a great scene to start off and Denning has painted a pretty neat picture of the old ship.

AND, in just 14 pages, I've been given the makings of a cool story as well as given some back story.  Holy carp - Jaina had to kill her own brother???  Because he turned to the dark side???  That is just nuts, and I'm sort of glad that I didn't have to read - God, I think it's at least 20 books - to get that information.

Oh yeah, and Lando must be what - in his 70s?  80s?  Let's remember, Han and Lando were at least 5-10 years older than Luke.  Let's be generous and say he's in his 70s.  I do want to point out a nice scene where Jaina remarks that Lando hasn't taken the time to dye his hair.  Hard to explain but I thought it was funny anyway.

That's as far as I've got so far - 14 pages.  But I am enjoying it; high-paced action to start the story mixed with some "here's-what-happened-for-those-of-you-who-don't-read-star-wars" fluff in the background.