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Reviews
Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
Not a life-or-death issue
With all the hardcore hissy fits over this above-average film, it's painfully obvious that Trekkies have too much invested in a very small part of life.
In the theatre during the Nemesis screening, there were scores of Geeks all unnaturally braying and hooting too hard and too long at the tiniest of in-jokes in order to bare their credentials (why?). You'd think the crack about Guinan's husbands was a lost collaboration by Mel Brooks and Billy Connolly ("She's really old! I know this louder than that guy! Fantastic!").
It's obvious the same punters couldn't wait to get online for as early and as vicious a supercilious swipe as they could manage. This is why Nemesis fails at the box office while ponderous drek like The Matrix Reloaded thrives. The same punters who knife modern Trek for putting entertainment before imbicilic sociology lectures are breaking a sweat congratulating themselves on their comprehension of Adolescent Philosophy 101 (the "message"-mongers apparently don't realise that no adult outside the choir who needs to learn Sesame Street values from a man pretending to be an android is in any way capable of absorbing them from a movie anyway). These expectations from a series that gave the first televised inter-racial kiss, yet has been ever too terrified of its own ridiculous fanbase to even acknowledge homosexuality (oh, wasn't Beverly's self-discovery with the female Trill a joy to watch? It won't even "boldly" go where Buffy or Dawson's Creek have gone before) or ongoing physical impairment (you think Geordie's enhancements "count"? Wrong!). What do we get at the end of this? Cloning? I don't pay money to be patronised.
Treks 3, 5 and 9 are infinitely, painfully worse than this movie. If it's the last, then Picard's expression at the end was all the bittersweet closure the series needed. Nemesis is pretty, it's dramatic and it's well-played - not bad, not an all-time great but certainly worth a rental. Pity those who crave offense and couldn't enjoy it for the movie it was, spending two hours and the ticket price dismantling every line for a way to bash it.
If you think Trek should be preaching to others on your behalf, hey: you can always become a teacher; and never forget there are people who abhor Trek but can read a real newspaper cover to cover all by themselves. It's true.
Yellow Submarine (1968)
What can you do with half a hole?
It is arguable that this remarkable movie has benefited from its subjects' non-involvement. A well-loved curiosity, Yellow Submarine deftly paints the mythical Beatles at the peak of their fame through unusually disinterested hands, without seeking approval for every artistic judgement, suffering undue interference. The film has therefore become a unique piece of art that snaps a remarkable moment in the history of popular culture.
The bizarre mash of design and animation styles manages to form a fairly seamless whole, conveyed in 'Sesame Street'-style episodic chapters for the song-length attention spans of sacramental chemical abusers and (secondly) children. For example, the "Only A Northern Song" accompaniment is a technically accomplished and visually stimulating celebration of The Beatles' concurrent psychedelic mythology in beautiful, quasi-religious pop art; then, stylistically, it is gone never to return. Interestingly, the song itself, like many others of Harrison's, is spiky, angry and much underrated; it is presented here only by way of gruff dismissal by the band as mere padding for the soundtrack. The Beatles' loss was the film-makers' gain.
The irreverence of the lads at their deadpan, press-conference best has survived the band's initial indifference to the project, and their wicked sense of humour has been stamped with uncanny accuracy on the script: many brilliant and groan-inducing one-liners are let fly, with more Beatles lyrical in-jokes than are entirely necessary ("Enough to fill the Albert Hall!").
On that note, it's hard to imagine dreary Rolling Stones partisans getting excited about the whole affair, and the very idea may be logically dismissed as narratively abominable contractual filler - a position supported by the minimal involvement of The Beatles themselves. However, even John, Paul, George & Ringo's brief but enthusiastic appearance at the end of the story is a real joy and an unexpected treat in a movie where the spirit of the age bleeds out of every frame. It is a document.
It's a tremendous pity that they couldn't find a use for "Strawberry Fields Forever," or more of "A Day In The Life" than its climactic orchestral cacophony, rather than retreading lesser moments like "When I'm Sixty-Four" or "All You Need Is Love" (essentially "Three Blind Mice" in drag) - perhaps the most dated, over-familiar and unwelcome contribution to the project, upon which the salvation of Pepperland is unfortunately dependent. That aside, the soundtrack is irreversibly fused to the film in the minds of those who see it and embrace it.
Infectious, nonsensical, whimsical and sometimes genuinely beautiful... many years from now, our children will be treasuring this film.
On a corrective point, many people seem to be under the impression that the "Hey Bulldog" sequence has been slapped into the film from the cutting room floor for the DVD - this is not the case: it has long been familiar to UK audiences.
Powaqqatsi (1988)
Difficult Second Album
After hearing so much about Koyaanisqatsi, I bought the DVD and its sequel in a double pack. When I watched them for the first time it was back to back, and I'm sorry to conclude that the naïve, ethnic romanticism of Powaqqatsi is unfit to bear such close commercial relation to the masterpiece, Koyaanisqatsi.
Horribly reminiscent of National Geographic trailers, it's doubtful anyone but the most backwardly PC tree-hugger, or perhaps the Weekly World News-reading American, will find Powaqqatsi revelatory or profound. None of the chilling self-awareness or mathematical beauty the original evoked is even approached; there is mostly a tinted assembly of stereotypes, very much concieved from a Northern/Western perspective.
The objective, alien assault on the familiar that was so shocking when trying to absorb Koyaanisqatsi is eerily missing from the mix, and the presentation of the decaying "old way" of life is little more than a light confection of slums, old people, children and temples, stitched into a jarring quilt of assorted Asian, African and South American agricultural and urban vignettes. The slightly patronising notion the title suggests - the corruption of innocence by technology, or the consumption of life by an unsubtle metaphorical demon - is barely present and makes its welcome entry into the fray at a rather late stage, ultimately failing to look like anything but natural progression. The staged shot of the child being clouded by dust from the truck in Luxor was a desperate artistic measure, and too little too late.
It would be fair play to argue that this is not assessing the movie on its own merits, but to be honest, if it weren't part of this trilogy, it would be discarded as a clumsy, undergraduate-standard montage of dry Third World clichés, which if not filmed at super-romantic frame rates would probably come in at around 30 minutes.
As a huge Philip Glass fan, I would comment here upon the music if I weren't so bitterly wounded by the dismal score, which succeeded only in making a chore of an already slightly tedious venture.