star trek Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Over on the website TNMC (via AICN), they have up a review of the Star Trek shooting script which picks out and describes the scenes that didn't make the final cut -- scenes that were probably shot and cut for a number of different reasons (pacing, running time, etc ..), but will hopefully arrive on the DVD. It's a shame, too, because some of these scenes seem to address my main problem with the movie: the boring villain, Nero (as played by Eric Bana). The scenes in question (which involve an entire Klingon subplot!) appear to give Nero more depth as a character, so hopefully we'll get to see them eventually. Here are a few descriptions from the site:

"The opening sequence, which sees the destruction of the USS Kelvin at the hands of Nero and his mining ship the Narada, has an extra bit we didn't see. While the Narada is trying to recover from being rammed by the Kelvin, bunches of Klingon warbirds decloak and surround it. This leads to a major subplot entirely removed from the final film."

"Next we go the Rura Penthe Klingon Prison Asteroid where Nero and his crew are being held. The Klingons catch someone trying to smuggle Federation maps to him. The Klingons begin to interrogate Nero, during which we learn that he has been there for ten years and hasn't said a word that whole time. The Klingons have a notebook of his that is full of drawings and calculations relating to Spock and his Jellyfish ship. They decide to use that slug thing we saw Nero using on Captain Pike in the finished film."

Read more at SciFi Squad

Has there ever been a summer that proved to be as important – not just personally, but historically - to comic book fans as 1989? Surely the last decade or so has produced its share of must-see superhero adventures, but before Tim Burton's Batman was release on June 23, 1989, the idea of wall-to-wall wallcrawlers was little more than a cobweb stuck to the bottom of discarded studio call sheets. Burton's aggressive, dark reimagining of Bob Kane's iconic character quite literally changed the face of comic book adaptations, and ushered in the era of superhero movies, even if it would take another ten or fifteen years to find the right balance between real-world grit, splash-page heroism, and tongue-in-cheek self-awareness.

Meanwhile, the rest of the summer of '89 was no less exciting, featuring sequels, comedies, dramas and plenty of fare that defied categorization – which, in all likelihood is why it defied the box office gods en route to home-video glory. And while we could no doubt devote countless column inches to recounting every film from that fateful summer, here's a decidedly more svelte list of the entries that most aroused our imaginations and inspired us to suckle at 1989's summer-movie teat.

Tattoos in the movies have a storied history, from the simple, classic LOVE/HATE knuckle tattoos in The Night of the Hunter to the slick and sexy additions to Angelina Jolie's existing body art in last summer's Wanted. Recent movies like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Eastern Promises have used tattoos to great effect; in Button, Captain Mike's homemade tattoos both referred to his life on the sea as a sailor, which in that era was the most visible tattoo population, and his own father's discouragement of his hopes of becoming an artist. Instead, he brings his art with him everywhere he goes. And Eastern Promises based its tattoos (hello, Viggo in his undies sipping a shot of vodka getting tattooed) on the heavily researched Russian tattoos and their different signifiers in the gangster underworld.

Unfortunately, most recent movies have the tendency to slap some crappy tribal on a character to make him or her seem more bad-ass, which, given the context of tattoos in the movies, is kind of understandable. But what's not is just how freaking terrible they are! Here are my personal picks of the worst ink spilled onscreen, plus a bonus mention for the most gorgeous tattoos in a movie, both in design and story use.

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Our good friends at Dutch Southern have debuted another funtastic, fanboy-esque t-shirt that you'll probably want to get your slimy little paws on immediately. Their latest shirt, titled "May the Best Prequel Win", shows the characters from the Star Trek prequel and the Star Wars prequels battling it out in colorful, cartoonish fashion. From the site description: "May the Best Prequel Win. I think it already has and anyone that's seen the new Star Trek and what Lucas shoveled out into theaters between 1999-2005 knows the victor. Here's the shirt that shows the battle: Sulu vs. Darth Maul, Spock vs. Obi Wan, Chekov vs. Jar Jar, Kirk vs. Anakin, Uhuru vs. Padme, Scotty vs. General Grievous, Bones vs. Samuel L. Jackson, and the Enterprise vs. the Death Star. Get your very own. Wear it loud, wear it proud." View a larger version of the image below.



I already have two shirts from Dutch Southern, and can totally vouch for them. The shirts are comfortable geeky conversation starters, and I couldn't recommend them more. This particular one was designed by Gimetzco, and it'll run you $20. For more info and to see Dutch Southern's entire collection, head over to their official site.

On Friday, Star Trek reached an important milestone when its U.S. box office total passed the $200 million mark. It's the first film of 2009 to cross that barrier, and that fact got me thinking: Friday was May 29. Isn't that later than usual for the first $200 million film of the year? I did some poking around at Box Office Mojo and found that my suspicions were correct.

In 2008, Iron Man hit $200 million on May 17. In 2007, Spider-Man 3 did it on May 12. In fact, since 2001, a film has always made it to $200 million before May 29, with only two exceptions: In 2006, X-Men: The Last Stand didn't achieve it until June 11, and in 2001 it was Shrek, on June 19.

To look at it another way, in some years there have been TWO $200 million films by the end of May. The reason for the deficit this year, obviously, is that the early "summer" (i.e., early May) releases didn't take off the way the tent poles in those slots usually do. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (released May 1) was a disappointment, and Angels & Demons (May 15) was never going to make the same kind of money as its predecessor.

Another factor is that May has lacked the major sequels and prequels that have usually been the biggest moneymakers. No Indiana Jones, no Spider-Man, no Star Wars, no Matrix. (In 2003, the first $200 million film was The Matrix Reloaded, which crossed the line on May 25.) If you'll recall, those movies tended to make a lot of money, and they tended to make it FAST. Like, record-breaking fast. In contrast, it took Star Trek 22 days to make $200 million -- and 31 films in history have done it in less time. Even Independence Day did it faster, and those were 1996 dollars.

I succumbed to the obvious sort-of-pun this week. I couldn't help it. I'm sorry.

$68.2 million for Up is pretty close to the highest opening weekend gross for any Pixar film in history -- just about $2 million off the numbers for both Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. It beats last year's Wall-E opening weekend by about $5 million, and since it's probably a bit less challenging than that film, it may hold up a little bit better. $250 million probably isn't out of reach, but we'll see.

The numbers for fan and critical favorite Drag Me to Hell -- $16.6 million -- will be a hot topic for discussion this week. It is not a particularly strong horror opening; this year, it finds a rough analogue in The Last House on the Left. The hope is that good reviews and word-of-mouth keep it afloat in the weeks to come, whereas most horror flicks open big and sink quickly.

After opening second-banana to Night at a Museum last week, Terminator Salvation took the expected big hit its second weekend -- 62%. It's likely to top out around $130 million domestically which, I feel safe in saying, is below expectations. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian is running a little bit behind its predecessor, though the first film had the benefit of opening at Christmastime. And The Brothers Bloom quietly expanded onto 150 screens, winding up in 11th place with a decent per-screen average.

Star Trek passed $200 million and now holds the #1 spot for the year.

The full top 10 after the jump.

We're four weeks into 2009's summer movie season. X-Men Origins: Wolverine got things off to a soggy start and was eclipsed by Star Trek as a popular favorite. Not many were impressed by Angels & Demons (though it did big business overseas), leading into this long weekend with Terminator Salvation and Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian doing battle (and a little Dance Flick on the side).

So what are your general impressions so far? I was disappointed by Wolverine and loved Star Trek. My ambitious weekend viewing plans began with a viewing of Terminator Salvation, which satisfied the 12-year-old boy in me, but left the adult me sorely hungry for more substantial entertainment. So I watched two DVDs that came out last Tuesday. Fritz Lang's Man Hunt (1941) stars Walter Pidgeon as a British big game hunter whose "sporting stalk" of Hitler ends up with the hunter becoming the hunted. Lang is an elegant, efficient storyteller; Man Hunt is intelligent and thoughtful. Peter Yates' The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) features Robert Mitchum (pictured) as the weary, wary "Eddie Fingers," a loyal, long-term, low-level Boston hood. Really, though, the story revolves around his "friends" -- criminal colleagues and law enforcement officers, people who don't really care about Eddie. Even with bank robberies and intense stake-outs and stand-offs, the real impact comes from the characters and what happens to them.

What did you watch over the Memorial Day weekend? Feel free to elaborate in the comments section.

This was a tough weekend to pick a film for our 1-10 Poll, but since Terminator Salvation seems to be the fan favorite (and the only movie opening up early, as in last night at midnight), we'll go with that. I'm sure you pretty much know the deal by now with our 1-10 polls; essentially, we're asking you to rate all of the big summer movies on a scale of 1-10 so that we can see what you think of them, as well as determine which film moviegoers enjoyed the most (and the least) this summer. So far Star Trek is in the lead ... will Terminator beat it?

From my Terminator Salvation review: "Terminator Salvation roars to life on screen with enough gutsy firepower to literally shake you in your seat. She's a mean, loud metallic beast that hasn't eaten in years, and the only commands she understands come in the form of growls, snarls, bullets and explosions. You can't really ask for more from an action picture (well you can, but we'll get to that); with Terminator Salvation, director McG proves that he's more than a punchline for online jokes -- his action scenes are fierce and eye-popping; he gives us the post-apocalyptic Skynet world we've always wanted to see and then asks if we want seconds or thirds. This is the Terminator film for a generation that expects over-the-top; an audience who likes it rough, but still PG-13, so we don't get carded at the door."

Sound off below ...

By now you've probably heard that astronauts on the International Space Station watched J.J. Abrams' Star Trek on Friday. (Here's the account in Times Online.) American astronaut Michael Barratt (left, in the photo) is evidently a hard-core fan and requested the movie specifically after realizing that "orbiting the earth in a space module was the perfect environment to watch" the flick. Also, he wouldn't have to wait in line.

I had visions of the astronauts floating in space, watching the movie as it was projected on the moon, and prompting children on Earth to point up and ask, "Is that the man in the moon, Daddy?" "No, honey, that's Spock." But actually they watched it on a computer, with their feet strapped to the floor to keep from floating away. NASA obtained a (presumably) legal copy of the film before re-formatting the movie "to enable it to be beamed up from Mission Control to the space station, floating about 220 miles above the surface of earth."

Barratt watched the movie with Russian cosmonaut and Expedition 19 commander Gennady I. Padalka (center) and Japanese flight engineer Koichi Wakata (right); any guesses as to what the Russian thought of Chekhov's accent? I didn't realize that movie nights on the space station are a tradition. Of course, that set me to wondering what other movies the astronauts have been watching and what movie I might want to see in space. Would 2001: A Space Odyssey or Star Wars be too obvious? Silent Running? Marooned or Apollo 13 might not be the best choices. If you were an astronaut, what would you want to watch? What should the astronauts watch next?

A below-expectations turn-out for Angels & Demons and good word-of-mouth for Star Trek helped make it a surprisingly close battle for the weekend's #1 spot. Studio estimates have the Dan Brown sequel at $48 million, beating out Trek by about $5 million. $48 million is nothing to sneeze at, but The Da Vinci Code opened to $77 million in the same weekend two years ago, which indicates that the anticipation for the sequel probably wasn't there to the extent necessary to sustain a blockbuster franchise. I am sure that the third Robert Langdon novel due this fall will see its way to the screen -- but maybe it'll be a little cheaper, and released sometime other than the summer.

Star Trek, on the other hand, is turning out to be the perfect summer film. It dropped off just 43% in its second weekend, which is bloody fantastic for a movie that opened to $75 million. It's already the highest-grossing Trek entry, but that's kind of a no-brainer. If word-of-mouth keeps it afloat, it will end up as one of the biggest movies of the summer.

With no new contenders hitting their demographic, the holdover family offerings -- 17 Again and Monsters vs. Aliens -- saw tiny drops, but that may change next week. Monsters vs. Aliens is also currently the biggest grosser of 2009, but that will change soon too.

The full top 10 after the jump.