September 20, 2006

• it makes jim look shinier.
• Wow, them external shots is gorgeous.
• CGI? Blasphemers! Clean up the prints, by all means, but adding new stuff in there -- who do they think they are, George Lucas?
• Sensors indicate that the storylines and dialogue would remain, Captain. It would simply be a cosmetic enhancement.
• They changed it - I liked the original special effects, and changing them isn't just "cosmetic". They were as much part of the art as the acting, costumes, props or writing. Besides, now they just look so out of place. The costumes, the design, even the style of acting is pure 1960s - but the new special effects scream 1990s (like the new planet killer). It looks like it ought to be Babylon 5. I like B5 (a lot), but this is just jarring.
• Good good good. Did anyone catch the Shatner Roast from comedy central? I downloaded it. High-larious. Takei & Betty White walked away with it. Shatner could only sit open mouthed as these people bagged his hair piece & his acting, his gut, etc. (I think, for the record, he was never truly bald, just thinning - he appears to have worn toupees in the 70s & a very good hair weave in the 80s but now looks to have had good hair plugs since his scalp is actually showing under the lights in this show). Apparently he caused some anger even in the original TOS production by walking away with a couple of the Kirk hairpieces - yes they were boosting his hair even then, probably those thin things that go under your natural hair when you brush it back to give it more body. Clearly the man was obsessed with his hair. As am I (with his hair). Shatner's hair is like the Ark of the Covenant. Nobody knows where it is or what it really looks like. Shatner fascinates me. He is .. truly an odd duck.
• And apparently (according to the article), all the new enhanced colour is a bit too much. I can see that, if the designers were compensating for a poorer medium.
• Offishial Site Okay jb, valid point and I agree. Still - as long as the originals are around and available (unlike TOS Star Wars -cheap VideoDisc dump notwithsanding- *cough*) I'd like to see it. And yeah, given that celebrity is ridiculous, Teh Shat rUlX0rz for playing it like 'at.
• Bond (Connery) vs. Kirk (of course Shatner)
• "I can see that, if the designers were compensating for a poorer medium." All the coloured gels flooding the walls & backdrops. I don't think they were compensating, since they didn't know that there would be some better film technology down the track, this was a part of the era, really. Remember, this was the late 60s. Everything was fucking garish, and nobody had ever done a serious Sci-Fi show before: this was the first (apart from those kids shows like Captain Galaxy or whatever in the 50s). Plus, the production crew had no recourse to digital mattes or expensive set dressing, they had to use painted mattes which were hideously expensive for large shots of alien planets, so could only be used rarely. For small sets, only recourse was to dress the plain plaster & wood walls with floods of coloured light, or have that classic orange-skied sound stage planet that always seemed to have polystyrene rocks. Ironically, I think one of the most evocative & interesting episodes was 'spectre of the gun' which I think was in the final season when they had less budget than a radio show. They literally had no money for sets, so the set designer simply had cowboy scenery & bits of walls, etc, hanging on threads, as if everything were hovering in mid-air with nothing around them. Quite surreal.
• Because it HAD HEART DAMMIT! *pants, wipes spittle with back of sleeve*
• And who's to say that on other planets rocks AREN'T made of polystyrene?
• Whoever thought of this should be horsewhipped; whoever approved it should be shot.
• *sets phaser on 'horsewhip'*
• "And who's to say that on other planets rocks AREN'T made of polystyrene?" True. True. "*sets phaser on 'horsewhip'*" Hmmm. What noise does THAT make?
• "Horsewhip" sounds kind of like a theremin, a prepared piano, and a rusty bed spring dubbed over each other. And don't tell anyone, but Spock actually likes it.
• Highly illogicaAAAAiigh! Ohh . . oh yeah . .
• What's a 'prepared piano'? One they've marinaded?
• It's manipulations such as tongue-depressors-with-sandpaper-glued-to-it-as-a-bow or attaching alligator clips to the strings, using a guitar pick counts I think . . . Unless TUM had something specific in mind. Ah Wikipedia, how do I lurv thee?
• *adds points to TUM's score*
• My music theory prof was a big John Cage fan.
• the inkstone and the bamboo stick with sable hair wrapped about its neck lie beside the unprepared paper waiting for my words to be untied