Saw the new Star Trek, and I really really liked it, now to go read the white font.

I must have been in just the right mood to see White House Down, because I enjoyed it unironically and even teared up at the daughter waving the Presidential flag to call off the air strike.

Channing Tatum has come light years as a dramatic actor from where he was four years ago (i.e., a block of wood, albeit an exquisitely carved one, in the first G.I. Joe movie), and this time out I enjoyed his performance without benefit of being hypnotized by his bare chest. Not only did I enjoy a Jamie Foxx performance, but I also sat through a Roland Emmerich action movie without saying "OH COME ON!" once.

It helps, of course, that many of the supporting roles are filled by gifted character actors like Richard Jenkins, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Lance Reddick, and James Woods.

So after reading the white font on STiD, and while still having enjoyed the heck out of the movie, some things rang true for me in the comments.

I've read plenty of fanfic, and some it was truly brilliant in how it dealt with true alternate universes and married them well to canon, complete with callbacks.

So, yes, it could have been done better, and yes, the final part did seem too call-backy and referential and therefore hollow.

I appreciated that we were in a different universe, and that some things could come about again and yet happen differently yet still have echoes of another universe. But yet, it still could have been smarter.

I get why it was called Into Darkness, and I get the complaints that it felt less Star-Treky, and the entire movie was based on "this is shit we should not be doing, because this is not what we're about" and the moral quandaries therein. Which makes me absolutely positive that any subsequent movies will be more about exploration (talk about things that made me verklempt: the captian's code spoken at the end, which is the show's intro monologue).

I was actually upset many times in the beginning about how the characters were going in directions that were morally wrong, and I don't think that it was until this movie that I realized in absolute clarity that this crew, this ship, wasn't military. What with all the battles and fights. I finally fully comprehended that these people were signed up for discovery and science and knowledge and exploration. And that they'd never signed up for battle or violence in a tactical military sense. And in that way, this movie was awesome. (It also made me mad because Kirk was pulling this staff into combat without giving them the choice to get the fuck off the ship, but I suppose he circumvented that by making his away-team the ones supposedly caught up in any potential violence).

I just saw a commercial for RIPD. It looks like the premise is exactly like G vs E.

Man, I saw a preview for that, and I...am concerned about Jeff Bridges.

He sure is having a lot of fun with that accent, whatever the hell it is.

So it turns out that R.I.P.D. was a comic book that ran from October 1999 to January 2000 and G vs E was a TV show that ran from July 1999 to May 2000. The similarity is a pure coincidence.

Yep, Tom, I meant to check that because I knew it was a comic book, but I didn't know the dates. Interesting that they were concurrent!

I'm starting to watch Dreamhouse with Daniel Craig and Rachel Weiz (holy lord, that trailer gives away what seems to be the entire movie) and there's a scene early on (warning: this is completely shallow and nothing to do with [my bad] film critique) where DC is carrying a ladder, and it's obvious that he doesn't wear boxers, because holy package, Batman. And it reminded me of an absurd moment in Star Trek Into Darkness where Kirk was in his wetsuit, and he totally had, like, a cod piece underneath. It was distracting.

These are my highbrow movie thoughts.

(chuckle)

Perhaps there is a clue in there re: why she left her husband for Craig during filming of this movie.