“Star Trek Into Darkness”…earlier?

Hmm…badge-y…

In the UK, we might suffer through hilariously terrible weather for most of the year, must bear at least some responsibility for unleashing Simon Cowell, One Direction & Robert Pattinson on an unsuspecting globe and can’t keep a shop open to save our lives, but know this, global peeps -

We’re getting “Star Trek Into Darkness” a week early!

Ignore that date on the poster above – the second “Trek” adventure from J.J. Abrams is now out in the UK on 9th May 2013 – which is going to come as scant consolation to all the people in the Den of Geek comments section, linked above, who have booked days off work  and holidays on the basis of it coming out a week or so later.  Nerds, eh – gotta love ‘em…

Related articles

• Trailer Park: ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ (marquee.blogs.cnn.com)
• MUST WATCH – Nice Little Behind The Scenes Featurette For ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ featuring JJ Abrams & Chris Pine (xavierpop.com)
• IDW Debuts First Look at J.J. Abrams’ “Star Trek Into Darkness” Klingons (comicbookresources.com)

The Good News Geek

I don’t know if this exactly qualifies as good news per se – for it heralds an ultimately tragic story – but it does confirm “Star Trek Into Darkness” director JJ Abrams as one of Hollywood’s kindler uber-nerds.

JJ Abrams grants terminally ill fan’s wish to see ‘Star Trek’ sequel

It’s small acts of kindness like this – ones which make somebody’s life that bit more enjoyable in the face of terrible illness or sadness – that make this oft-bleak world of ours seem a bit more bearable.

I’m sure that internet hard-men and the Troll set are already preparing their snappy responses to this story and pitching it as part of the P.R. campaign for the movie or some kind of scam, but I think we all know that this isn’t an act quite as cynical as some perma-scowling hipsters would have you believe it to be.

And, after all, isn’t it nice to be nice sometimes?  It’s almost as if Reddit is good for something other than Cat Memes and gross sexism after all…

 

“Star Trek Into Darkness” teaser is…awesome?

Oh hai there, “Into Darkness” bad person, Benedict Cumberbatch! Trailer images (C) Paramount Pictures/Bad Robot

If you haven’t spent your day constantly re-watching the “Into Darkness” teaser trailer on your PC at work, there’s a good chance that you A) Don’t have to use a PC for your work or B) Are Fluffrick and are sadly compelled to rock an office PC so antediluvian that it might as well be considered a Steampunk artefact.

If, like this blogger, you had to wait until home time to catch the new J.J. Abrams‘ “Star Trek“ movie’s teaser trailer, no doubt you’re trying to form words and phrases which can fully encompass the splendiferousness with which your gentle eyeballs have been subject to.

From the look on Chris Pine and Zoe Saldana’s faces, Cumberbatch isn’t playing “Twister”.  Unless it’s Deadly 23rd Century Death-Trap Twister, of course.

The best that I can come up with is a onamatapeaic noise which sounds like a small child gargling jelly compulsively.  All teaser trailers are meant to pimp the biggest, boldest moments of any blockbuster, but this first look is impressive as much for lead bad guy Benedict Cumberbatch’s superbly gravelly, unrelenting grim voice-over which offers a tantalising suggestion that the shiny-happy territory of the rebooted 2009 film is being jettisoned in favour of “Wrath of Khan“-style, “I can’t believe they did that!“ character offing and high stakes scares.  In fact, if you’ve watched the slightly longer, Japanese teaser trailer for the film, the “Wrath of Khan” comparison seems more than justified…

Fringe versus Fringe – who will triumph?

 

Go and press your  face against the screen HERE if you haven’t seen the trailer.  And then watch it 25 times.  You know you want to…

Related articles

• First Star Trek Into Darkness Teaser Sends the Enterprise Straight to Hell (io9.com)
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“Star Trek 2″ pictures show…stuff.

I know that folks can be a mite sensitive about spoilers when it comes to the next “Star Trek” film from curly-haired, black eyeglass-framed visionary J.J. Abrams.

Chances are that they don’t want to know about the nature of Benedict Cumberbatch’s role, whether Zachary Quinto is still an Emo bad ass or how many alien ladies Chris Pine is going to squire this time around.

So those guys are going to be as ticked off as Abrams was at the weekend when some sneaky pictures leaked from the set of the second “Star Trek” film – I’m going to link to them but I’ll spare your spoiler-radar from going haywire by including the most innocuous one.

But what does it all mean? She's leaning, there's some pieces of set there - such an enigma!

Yep, it’s the one of Zoe Saldana’s Uhura getting to wield a phaser, in the daylight, on some kind of space craft.  If you want to see Messrs Cumberbatch and Quinto having words, click-through to Den of Geek’s story.

Needless to say, the second Abrams “Trek” movie is one of my most eagerly anticipated films of 2013 and any degree of rampant spoilers won’t stop me from going to see this film on opening weekend.  Probably in the company of Mrs Rolling Eyeballs and our good friend, Eva’s Mum – who wasn’t a “Trek” fan before seeing the film but certainly was afterwards (she’s a big Abrams /“Lost” and “Alias” fan).

What I (might) be watching tonight…

The business of choosing DVD rentals is a fraught one in our house.

We’ve just given up on our subscription to the UK’s leading provider of rental-by-post for the reasons which most people might cite – your top choices not turning up, the discs which you get sent being hit-and-miss in terms of cleanliness and playability, the title that you added in haste during one period of insomniac delirium and never being watched.  The short and long of it is that we weren’t watching stuff, were paying a monthly subscription no matter what and spending more money than we needed to on what is the thinking nerd’s equivalent of the unused gym membership.

Hence, we’re supporting our local Blockbuster whilst it’s still there.

We’re planning to watch this dynamic duo of films tonight:

When Irish eyes are smiling...

and somehow we missed this (hopefully) delightful valentine to nerdery and film-making last summer…

That J.J. Abrams - crazy angles, crazy guy...

I’m expecting big things, I won’t lie.  With “Fright Night”, I’ve yet to see anything that Anton Yelchin was in which I didn’t like  (and yes, that is me admitting on the Internet that I enjoyed “Terminator Salvation”).

With “Fright Night”, I loved the original – it was a VHS/TV broadcast staple for me, although I’ve not seen it in years.  Here’s hoping that this revamp (sorry, had to be done) keeps the fine balance of scares to chuckles that Tom Holland’s 1985 film managed to deliver.

Also – this dude is in it:

MindFreak! Or not, what with copyright infringement and all that jazz...

So, plus ten to awesome Scots Thesp-based kick assery then?

“Star Trek 2″ is 3D. Sort of.

Have geek, will boldly travel.

In a move calculated to tick off the 3D evangelists of the world, nerd warlock J J Abrams has announced that his sequel to “Star Trek” will shoot in 2D and be post-converted to the 3D format.  And possibly IMAX, too.  Maybe even Super-8?

I admire Abrams for sticking to his guns and shooting in the format which he feels most comfortable with but I do find it disturbing that studios are now so devoted to the idea of having a 3D version of a blockbuster that they’re quite happy to have the original film retro-fitted in post production to have another box copy element to tick off.

Either make it stereoscopic or don’t – the halfway-house model of converting a film after the fact very rarely ends up doing anything other than piss off the devotees and annoys the less passionate section of the audience who just want to see a film and end up having to pay more for the privilege, wearing a crappy pair of knock-off Raybans into the bargain.

I’m all for 3D when it’s done well – “Avatar“, “Resident Evil-Afterlife” – so I’m not dead set against the format.  What I am dead set against is taking something and mis-shaping it so that it fits into a marketing strategy.

The idea that Abrams wants to post-covert to 3D and IMAX, citing the example of “Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows” as a good use of the process fills me dread as that film was a complete and utter train-wreck in IMAX 3D.  Badly ghosted images, out of focus and wholly destroyed compositions, a lifelessly dull, bleached-out picture which obscured details – this is not what you pay a price premium for and if the evidence of “Deathly Hallows Part 2″ in IMAX tells me anything it is that I will never again step through the door of any cinema which offers this kind of craven money grab and tries to pretend that they’re offering a premium experience.

“Star Trek 2″ loses Del Toro

Looking forward to seeing Benicio Del Toro play Khan in “Star Trek 2″?  

Nope, not Khan. Not even a little bit.

Yeah…that’s not going to be happening, it turns out.  Bummer.

Were he not otherwise engaged with playing the heavy in the new Bond movie “Skyfall”, I would suggest that Javier Bardem might make a fun substitute, but  it seems that director J.J. Abrams will have to look elsewhere for a new “Star Trek” antagonist.

Rumour insists that Khan is the big bad in this instalment of the sci-fi series – a belief partially supported by the consistent denial of said character’s place in the story by anybody connected with the film.  If you deny anything enough, of course, the internet hive mind tends to believe that such vociferous refusals are tantamount to confirmation.

I’m not sure that we need to reintroduce such staples of classic “Trek” into this rebooted incarnation of Gene Roddenberry’s universe – isn’t part of the point of this version that it isn’t beholden to the past.  You can’t ignore it entirely but wouldn’t it be better to use it as a jumping-off point and to invent new mythology?

Just saying.

 

Buckaroo Banzai joins the Starship Enterprise…

Let me the 5,334th blogger to hope that he's playing Banzai in the next "Star Trek"...

More good news on the casting for J.J. Abrams’ next “Star Trek” movie – following on from the news that British thesp Alice Eve is lined-up to star (the internet scuttlebutt has her playing everyone from Nurse Chapel to a curiously attractive Tribble) comes the word via various blogs that Peter Weller is signed up for an a typically unspecified role.

He’s still a really great actor, as anybody who saw his excellent guest spot on “Fringe” will surely attest, so perhaps he’s going to play a conflicted nasty piece of work if he isn’t on the side of Kirk and co.

More speculation surely awaits as we await the  release of the film in 2013…

“Star Trek 2″ gets release date

JJ Abrams. Not pictured, lots of lovely lens flare

May 17th, 2013 – that’s your release date for J. J. Abrams’ second bold voyage with the all youthful and oddly sexed-up crew of the Starship Enterprise.

As inevitable as a new Kardashian reality show on the E! Network, the second “Star Trek” film will apparently be shot in native 3D which bodes well for those fans of the first film who wanted to get up close and personal with Zachary Quinto’s Spock ears.

Abrams shaky-cam plus  his love of omni-present lens flare divided by 3D equals not sure if wants?

Who am I kidding – any news of a second “Star Trek” film from this crew is fine by me.

“Star Trek 2″ delayed to 2013, time-travelling Borg conspiracy unconfirmed.

For nerds, by nerds, watched by the normals too. Funny old universe.

Given the delay in sleight-of-hand-loving, hypethenate geek overlord J.J. Abrams confirming his involvement and the wait for an approved script, and perhaps because Paramount doesn’t like us very much and won’t let us have nice things, the announcement today that the second “Star Trek” movie won’t be with us until 2013 comes as no big surprise.

Paramount are having another crack at turning “G.I. Joe” into a film that you might want to see – good luck with that particular Herculean labour, folks – and that accounts for their Summer 2012 focus.  The end of 2012 will likely belong to the first part of Peter Jackson’s adaptation of “The Hobbit” and the next Bond movie, so as nobody with a brain is releasing much else at the end of next year, the second entry in the rebooted series is boldly going to a summer 2013 bow.

I’m all for waiting if the resultant film is as enjoyable as part one was and despite a lot of aggrieved chatter from the devout fans of classic Trek online, I felt that “Star Trek” was a reboot which absolutely worked and was the first salvo in a SF series that was infinitely more desirable than a new “Star Wars” movie.

Not great news for a blogger’s 300th post, but them’s the breaks.