Posts Tagged With: movies

STAR TREK: GENERATIONS is Great (Even if You Don’t Like the Message)

This week I take on the haters of STAR TREK: GENERATIONS, the very first cinematic adventure of the Enterprise-D and the “Next Generation” crew.

I’m not actually attacking any haters, I don’t mind if you don’t like it. BUT, I do think the movie has been judged unfairly, and it’s actually a masterpiece of messaging. The problem? The message flies in the face of popular franchise (and fan) conventions. Not fan conventions like San Diego Comic Con, I mean, what people expect.

However, the message is an important one. And as I find myself pondering–like Picard–that perhaps I have more days behind me than in front of me, it’s a message I find comforting.

Maybe you will, too. But if you don’t, no refunds.

Continue reading
Categories: Movies, Review, star trek, TV | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sometimes Everything Goes to Hell, and You Have to Create

Every musician on Earth knows it – being eviscerated is the best song-writing fuel there is. Nothing makes you pour your heart into art like having it ripped out of your body and pureed. Fortunately for all of us not on the receiving end of said pain, we get to enjoy the badass art that’s birthed by human agony. Scottish sorcerer (and occasional writer) Grant Morrison wrote “All Star Superman” because his dad had just died. Edgar Allen Poe’s entire body of work cataloged the agony of losing the one you love at an early age. Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” is essentially a novel-length suicide note.

There’s a catharsis factor to creating art (a book, a movie, or a pornographic comic about Alice in Wonderland coughAlanMoorecough). The world weary artist gets to scream into the void all their fears and frustrations. They get to pour alcohol on their wounds in full view of the public. They get to suck the poison out of the snakebite that is their life. Plus, you know, sometimes they get paid for it and that’s nice.

This list could go on infinitely, but here are four classic movies that we only got to see because someone’s life exploded, and they decided to point a camera at it.

Continue reading

Categories: Movies | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

Blog at WordPress.com.