posted
"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" was the opening movie on this years "Stockholms Filmfestival". Ang Lee was here himself and said some words before cutting the ribbon, it was great. I can seriously recommend it, it's not at all a "Kung-fu flick", the awesome fight-scenes are very carefully woven into the story. The plot is not, I repeat NOT, subordinate to the battles.
It's incredibly beautifully shot, with all the best sceneries China has to offer; eden-like gardens, dry steppes, snowy mountains, dripping caves, bilowing bamboo-woods.
And for once the female aspect of the chinese martial arts is put at its peak with two wonderful actresses, plus all the swords, polearms and sticks you didn't even know existed aside from nunchakus.
And it has the most imaginative use of nylon strings I've ever seen...
About the topic, am I to understand that the ST:I SE isn't done yet? That image is great, I can't wait to see what V'Ger's insides look like!
------------------ Here lies a toppled god, His fall was not a small one. We did but build his pedestal, A narrow and a tall one.
posted
Well, Liam, what I mean was that Paramount are the money-hungry pricks that they are... have released a DVD line with no 'goodies' and will then release them all again WITH the goodies - of course this'll mean cut footage - but Wrath and Voyage Home have the most well known cut sequences... well Wrath does.
Andrew
------------------ "This is cooling, faster than I can..." Tori Amos "Cooling"
posted
I only now got to reading this thread and the review. I must say I'm impressed. What ST:TMP always held IMHO was promise, and elbow room. Unlike the tightly wound ST2 or the less character- but more plot-driven ST3 and 6, which all represented "success through focus", TMP, ST4 and ST5 strove for "success through imagination". There was little focus on any aspect of characters or plot in these latter three, but there was lots of "concept", lots of "playground" to be filled by the imagination of the audience.
Despite visiting a couple of exotic locations, ST2, 3 and 6 were bottle shows centering on the known. All the locations outside the Enterprise were essential for the plot. In contrast, TMP and ST4 showed little starship interiors when compared with the "superfluous" exteriors. We didn't need to see Golden Gate or the kaleidoscopic V'Ger forcefields, nor a punk in a bus with a sonic weapon and an attitude. We saw them nevertheless. That made it feel as if we were actually *living* in this environment, not just walking through it in pursuit of a plot.
And TMP and ST4 showed us a Starfleet, with ships other than the Enterprise (even if they always dropped the ball), with an organization which supported Kirk instead of one which Kirk would have had to fight.
IMHO the DC of TMP is going to enhance on these very aspects. Wider vistas, more milieu and ambience and feel, more elbow room for thought. "Eye candy", it's called by some. Well, my eye has a sweet tooth. And I prefer eye candy where things are *built* instead of destroyed. The very act of enhancing TMP is an act of building something, enlarging the Trek universe somehow. I don't care if the editing is tighter now or not, I want to see all the goodies I missed, all the unessential things like Vulcan landscapes or Enterprise viewports or close-ups of Spock showing emotion.
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