Star Trek Into Darkness. J.J. Abrams. 2013. ⚄

How odd! This shifts between 16:9 (outside the ship) and … 16:7? I’m eyeballing… on the ship. Oh, it’s 2.4:1, which is like 16:6.6…? Whatevs.

I’ve seen this before, but on DVD, so I’ve barely seen 10% of it. I mean, bitrate wise; this is 4K.

I remember people really hating this when it came out, and I watched it, and I loved it. Perhaps I won’t still be a fan? Perhaps I will? Excitement!

[an hour passes]

Wow. This is like the Platonic ideal of a Star Trek movie. It’s everything I love about Star Trek (a group of people who trust each other and are striving towards a greater goal), but with more action and fun. You still get the discussions about ethics, but there’s so much fun stuff going on.

Oh why did Abrams defect to the more boring Star Wars universe? That’s a universe that’s basically Wagon Trail In Space and isn’t very interesting.

And why didn’t the people who made Picard look at this instead of getting all their impulses from Battlestar Galactica? BSG was brilliant in 2004, but it’s so played out and tired now.

The only thing that’s even remotely annoying here is the way that Abrams keeps shifting focus. I mean, it looks cool, but after a couple of times, it’s enough.

[half an hour more passes]

OK, this may be the best Trek thing ever, and I could watch this forever, but it’s not a perfect movie. It’s pretty flabby in the middle, with a lot of exposition that doesn’t really seem necessary.

View From The Top. Bruno Barreto. 2003.

The reason I’m watching this is complimacated and convoluted.

OK, I was watching Graham Norton, and Richard Ayoade was one of the guests, and he had a book to sell. I liked him in that programme where he was in that basement, and he sounded JUST THE SAME on Norton, so I bought the book:

And I started reading it last night. It’s fascinating, because it’s written in his precise voice. But then there’s this:

“A book about a movie about a journey” is a line from Geoff Dyer’s brilliant book about Tarkovskij’s Stalker, so I’m assuming that this is a parody of Zona? So this book is about View From The Top, which I assume is the worst movie ever:

Which makes sense, because a parody of Zona should definitely be about a horrible movie, for symmetry.

And it’s even more apposite than that, because here’s a line from Zona:

There are more and more things […] from which one has to avert one’s ears and eyes. With television I have my strict rule, a rule applying to Jeremy Clarkson, Jonathan Ross, Russell Brand, Graham Norton and a whole bunch of others whose names I don’t even know; I won’t have these people in the house.

And I bought this book because I saw Ayoade on Graham Norton! I let him into my house! HOW REFERENTIAL IS THAT!!!1!

How meta can you go?

Now.

Let’s watch the movie.

[fifteen minutes pass]

Oh deer. I assumed that this was going to be bad, but it’s… it’s bad. It’s really bad.

I mean, it’s got performers that know how to do comedy, like Christina Applegate. But there’s nothing here. The script is a void. There are no funny lines. It’s structured like they’re saying funny stuff, and they have funny costumes, but there’s… nothing here.

The writer of this hasn’t written any other movie, but he’s apparently showrunning a TV series now.

[half an hour passes]

OK, I can see why Ayoade chose this movie in particular. It’s dire in a kinda interesting way. That is, it’s professionally made — there’s no obvious gaffes, technically. It’s just so in-credibly vapid: Buying into the dominant value system totally, without any critique of anything beyond pointing out that airline passengers are sometimes a handful.

The movie is so close to being a satire of itself.

Now I really want to read the Ayoade book. I hope he’s not just making fun of this horrible movie, but delves into how… how this movie was made. How could that even happen? I’ve seen a lot of horrible movies, but you can usually understand how they got to be made. But I do not grok that at all here.

I almost hesitate to include this gif here because it’s the only scene in the movie that’s even close to being funny:

But that’s the high point! There’s nothing else even close to this!

Landsbykirken. Carl Theodor Dreyer. 1947. ⚂

Over on my main blog I’m watching a bunch of good movies, and there’s so many extras on the discs. So this is a test on blogging about these some of these extras… I mean, not docu shorts or anything, but when they’ve included shorts by the director in question (and stuff).

If it turns out to be even more pointless than usual, I’ll drop it.

So this is a short by Dreyer? From 1947? Included on the BFI disc of Gertrud, which is from 1964? I’m sure this makes sense.

I guess I can see the interest… some of these shots are striking, but… on the whole, it’s… a documentary about churches.