YouTube Dave Konig Roasts George Takei

As usual, Dick Cheney is right and Barack Obama is wrong.

It’s time to wave the pink flag and drop opposition to gay marriage.

I’ve changed my thinking on this one. Personally, I admit my opposition to gay marriage has always been on the same level as my opposition to the death penalty: I understand and appreciate the arguments against both intellectually – but in actual practice, I simply don’t lose any sleep over either. With the death penalty, I sympathize with moral opposition – but when a Ted Bundy takes that final ride on “Old Sparky” (or that final big sleep on “Old Lethal Injectiony”), my only real objection is that it isn’t televised. (more…)

Steve Mason’s Exclusive Early Box Office Estimates:

1. Up – $20.5M Friday … $67M 3-day … $67M cume
2. Night at the Museum 2 – $7.5M Friday … $27M 3-day … $106.79M cume
3. Drag Me To Hell – $6.25M Friday … $16.5M 3-day … $16.5M cume
4. Terminator Salvation- $5M Friday … $16M 3-day … $90.5M cume
5. Star Trek – $3.7M Friday … $13.5M 3-day … $210.2M cume
6. Angels & Demons – $3.6M Friday … $12M 3-day … $105.56M cume
7. Dance Flick – $1.7M Friday … $5.2M 3-day … $19.54M cume

If these numbers hold, “Up” will open better than “Wall-E” and “Monsters and Aliens.”

Considering ”Up” is fairly low concept and starring a 78 year-old man, this is beyond impressive. Word of mouth, rave reviews and the reservoir of goodwill Pixar’s built up over the years are making this a real audience-driven sensation. (more…)

Memorial Day puts the lie to the nonsense that violence never solves anything.

Those rows of white tombstones decorated with little flags are the reason Americans don’t walk downtown, past the ruins where the synagogue once stood, to grab a schnitzel und ein bier from that little imbiss next to der bahnhof.  They are why there isn’t a smoking pit in the heart of Los Angeles where the Library Tower used to be.

Violence never solves anything, war is not the answer, arms are for hugging….  It’s hard to believe that there are adults out there that actually buy into such foolishness.

Memorial Day is about men and women who didn’t orient their lives to the dictates of poorly thought-through bumper sticker clichés that belong on the rear of some NPR-listening public school administrator’s Prius.  It’s about men and women who understood that sometimes doing the right thing means doing the hardest thing. (more…)

Despite early polling data showing a distinct lack of enthusiasm toward the Star Trek movie reboot by J. J. Abrams (Lost, Alias, Cloverfield, Fringe, Felicity), the film had an excellent opening weekend at the U.S. movie box office.

The film took in an estimated $72.5 million over the weekend. Even when adjusted for inflation, that’s far more than any of the previous Star Trek movies took in.

This has cultural significance beyond the fortunes of the Star Trek franchise and its studio. As I noted in writing about an Abrams interview last fall, Abrams said “he was drawn to the idealism behind the franchise. He hopes to make a more optimistic point of view as popular as the somewhat bleak vision of The Dark Knight was.” (more…)

With a haul of $16.6 million, “Angels & Demons” nabbed the top spot from “Star Trek” yesterday, but fell short of “The Da Vinci Code’s” $28.6 million Friday debut in May of 2006.

Compared to “Spider-Man,” “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Narnia,” and “National Treasure” this is a pretty steep drop for a sequel, but while everyone saw “The Da Vinci Code,” have you met anyone who liked it? For a sequel to perform close or even better than the original, it has to engender some goodwill and on no front did “Da Vinci” do that. (more…)

Don’t beam me up, Scotty. The Capt. James T. Kirk in the new “Star Trek” film is proof of how much ground men have lost in today’s culture. 

Before you tell me it is just a movie, recall the words of series creator Gene Roddenberry: “I have no belief that Star Trek depicts the actual future,” Roddenberry said, “it depicts us, now…”  And right now, the latest Star Trek depicts men as insecure, impulsive lechs who need women and aliens to keep them out of trouble.

Consider four attributes of the ideal man: self-control, bravery, confidence and sex appeal.

In the original series, Kirk has supreme self-control. He sacrifices himself for the safety of his crew and, in more than one episode, even chooses duty over true love. In the latest “Star Trek,” Kirk is Peter Pan, an irresponsible, reckless man-boy.  (Warning: plot spoilers ahead.) The new Kirk tears down an empty Iowa highway in a stolen hot rod and drives off a cliff, jumping out to save himself, not the car.  He gets into bar fights to serve his vanity, not some higher cause like rescuing the crew from aliens.  (more…)

In honor of Hollywood’s current trend, I offer you not a new blog entry but instead a sequel to my last post.  My little entry had some legs and even garnered a response on the extremist and out of touch web site the Huffington Post.  That author, some washed up corporate record executive who clings to the notion that he is “cool” and “hip,” actually called me a “sociopath winger.” Imagine that, rather than debate the merits of my ideas, he called me a name.  Based on my resume and personal history, I can only assume that his reference was to my unabashed fandom of the rock band Winger and its leader, hair band maestro, Kip Winger.

I read through all of the comments on this site and on others that linked to the article, and rather than jump in, I thought I would address some of the consistent themes here.

To clarify, the overall idea is that Conservatism needs to be packaged and sold on an overriding concept:  freedom and personal liberty.  The secondary attribute of this concept is the natural extension that government should be small, unobtrusive, and focused on state leadership opposed to the consolidation of federal power.  (more…)

In this episode, “NewsBusted” covers: Unemployment, Vice President Biden, the Death Tax, Meredith Viera, the State Department, Michael Savage, Manny Ramirez, Star Trek, Rihanna, and Chris Brown.

YouTube

I just cannot get behind this Star Trek rebirth.  The whole thing is just so unrealistic.  Not the warp speed or phasers or beaming about the universe – those are at least remotely plausible.  I am talking about the fact that the starship Enterprise is composed entirely of officers and yet it still seems to function.  Where are the non-commissioned officers (NCO), the petty officers and sergeants who actually make any military organization run?  No, I can suspend disbelief over Klingons and tribbles, and I actively support the notion of green alien hotties.  But the idea of a functioning military unit without sergeants is just a wormhole too far.

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Hollywood movies often focus on the commanders, the captains and colonels, but they have also managed to highlight some great sergeants as well.  When you are picking out DVDs for next weekend, remember that May 16th is Armed Forces Day and consider a few selections that show the sergeant in all his gruff and grumbling glory. 

If you have never experienced the joy of going through basic training and do not plan to, your first stop should be Full Metal Jacket, with R. Lee Ermey’s legendary portrayal of a Marine drill instructor who must have missed out on the block of instruction on sensitivity.  I saw this in the theater about a week before I reported to Basic.  That was a poor idea. (more…)

Every action picture is a science-fiction picture anymore. How else to explain Hero Survival In A Hail of Bullets, Inexhaustible Supply Of Energy In A Street Fight, and the Amazing Car That Still Operates After Driving Off A Building? Star Trek is not an exploration of an alternative physics or the ramifications of technology that’s possible only after the intractable engineering problems have been solved. Star Trek is an action picture set in space. It’s good fun, it’s exciting and engaging, it nods to a few perpetual icons of pop culture, and it’s even suitable for families. What’s not to like?

The most notable achievement here is the extraction of the franchise from fanboy fever swamps into mega-mainstream entertainment. The first three or four Star Trek movies were events with fanfare and media pomp, but after that they diminished into little more than baubled-up TV episodes for fans. You had to know not only the characters but also the Star Trek “universe” to really care about what was going on and why. But this picture works for anybody who even stumbles into it: Kirk is a tough guy, Spock is a smart guy, the rest are identifiably quirky in a Syd Field kind of way, and everybody who aspires to be above the title in their next movie is sexy. (more…)

Let’s just get to where we left off in Part 1.

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5. Star Trek: Generations (1994) – Yes, “Where the hell’s Kirk?” was my mantra through most of the second act, but the Next Generation (TNG) crew got off to a promising start with William Shatner’s Captain Kirk bookending events to graciously hand off the baton. Plot holes riddle the story of Malcolm McDowall’s Soran and his maniacal attempt to return to the Nexus, an energy ribbon with a crack-like addictive ability to deliver its inhabitants into a dream-like nirvana (there had to be easier ways to get in the thing other than blowing up an entire friggin’ planet), but the concept of the Nexus – the idea of choosing between a false perfection and an imperfect reality is Trek at its best, and the scene where Picard enjoys a heart-wrenching Christmas with a family he’ll never have is a franchise high point. The best moments, though, arrive when Kirk and Picard, two Captains wildly different in personality but who share a love called Enterprise, come together to save the Universe. The complaints about Kirk’s death being anti-climatic are valid and the less than iconic setting for the demise of an icon is obviously due to budget and imagination constraints, but for me it works. When heroes fall it’s often in nondescript places we’ve never heard of where a stand has been taken to risk one’s life for those they’ve never met. Kirk may not have been real, but his final moments are. (more…)

Rebooting Bond with Daniel Craig was Bold. Christopher Nolan’s Reinvention of Batman was genius. But some thought it was overly-ambitious, even audacious, to attempt to restart the Star Trek franchise. It has begun to pay off already for Paramount Pictures, and there will dividends for years to come.

A shiny new Enterprise is luring in a new generation of STAR TREK fans

J.J. Abrams is officially the Lazarus of movie directors as his all-new Star Trek has gone “Boldly Gone Where No Star Trek Movie has Gone Before.” With a cast of relative unknowns, the 42-year-old has resurrected a franchise that had been killed by insular “nerdyness” and timid imagination. The Gene Rodenberry creation didn’t so much bomb as it died slowly over a period of years. First, the 2002 movie Star Trek: Nemesis starring the Next Generation cast disappointed with a meager $43.3M domestic. Then, the final TV series Enterprise, which starred Scott Bakula, was not embraced by core fans or broader audiences and was canceled after four seasons, ending May 13, 2005.

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J.J. Abrams reboot of the much beloved “Star Trek” franchise is reminiscent of the films that came before, but not the best of them. Like the other odd-numbered disappointments, this entry, number 11, works best when concentrating on character, but falls flat due to a dull villain with nothing to do other than act as a macguffin. After a splendid first hour expertly sets up and re-introduces the characters, the second half turns as derivative as a video game with superb special effects supporting poorly choreographed and frantically edited action sequences that carry no suspense because the outcome is obvious and the personal human drama missing.

“Trek” opens with what turns out to be its best scene and one of the best in the franchise; the circumstances around the birth of James Tiberius Kirk. Our hero is well-served here with an imaginative and exciting mythology that shows the filmmakers understand the unique importance of the character. This sequence is also effective in setting up our villain, the Romulan Nero (an almost unrecognizable Eric Bana), who’s leaping about in time hell-bent on the worst kind of revenge against the Federation for something yet to happen. (more…)

Several sources at competing studios have told me that J.J. Abrams’ all-new reboot of Star Trek (Paramount), which debuted last night at 7pm at many of its 3,849 locations, may have grossed as much as $6.5M-$7.5M. Studio honchos are “locked down tight” about actual numbers, but that is in the same ballpark as Transformers (Dreamworks/Paramount), which grabbed $8.8M in its previews starting at 8pm on Monday, July 2 during the summer of 2007. (What portion of ticket sales fall into Thursday and what percentage fall into Friday will likely be an open question even after final numbers are in.)

William Shatner (left) with Captain Kirk 2.0 Chris Pine

Keep in mind that Paramount never changed its Star Trek marketing to promote the 7pm Thursday start, so the opening night audience was likely heavy on Trekkers or Trekkies (not sure which term is “politically correct” anymore). So this was a “soft” opening and what amounts to a night of word-of-mouth screenings. Keep in mind that Transformers premiered during the summer when kids are more available while Star Trek has made its premiere during the school year.

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Have at it.

Discuss. Debate. Write your own review…

With the rebooted “Star Trek” hitting a gajillion theatres at midnight tonight, a good enough excuse has finally arisen to allow for a couple of top 5 posts listing the 10 “Trek” films from worst to best. Okay, I didn’t need an excuse, but I did need an intro sentence with all that information in it.

Other than 10, 9, and 8, which really are difficult to sit through, the remaining 7 are on fairly regular rotation here in my little East L.A. abode. Revisiting the Trek world and spending time with old friends from the original crew is a cinematic pleasure The Hot Little Number I Used to Call Mrs. Harry and I look forward to at least once a year.

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10. Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) – If you’re a fan of high-adventure mixed with compelling themes and interesting characters the final chapter of the Next Generation (TNG) crew is your nemesis. The story itself isn’t as bad as you might think, it’s mediocre to be sure, but the real problem is that this cast is much too bland to elevate blah material. There was never much spark between TNG crew and even less natural warmth. They tried valiantly (and frequently the strain showed), but unlike the original gang, other than Picard, they always came off as chemistry-free television actors who had no business being on the big screen. This meant the material had to deliver the zing the actors couldn’t and the story and direction for “Nemesis” doesn’t come close. A dull villain and listless script can make for a forgettable one-hour television episode, but spread over 116-minutes, this outing should’ve been called “Star Trek: Interminable.” (more…)

The all-new J.J. Abrams reboot of Star Trek (Paramount) will win the second weekend of the Hollywood Summer Box Office season by at least a couple of light years over Fox’s fast-fading X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but some of the astronomical numbers I’ve seen floating around in the blogosphere are very over-heated. Make no mistake, this movie will open extraordinarily well, but it’s not going to play out as a typical front-loaded blockbuster. Moviegoers need time to shake off the disappointment of the final TV series Enterprise (starring Scott Bakula and canceled after four seasons) and the disastrous 2002 final film Star Trek: Nemesis ($43.3M domestic). It will take time for a new generation of fans to discover the magic of Gene Rodenberry’s vision of the future through Abrams’ magical lens.

As of Wednesday night, Star Trek is cruising with 94% Fresh (positive) reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and critics are slinging some seriously glowing hyperbole.

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Even before “Star Trek” launches into the stratosphere this weekend, director JJ Abrams is taking a victory lap.

With the film hogging 81% of all ticket sales at Fandango.com as well as the covers of Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly and Wired (which Abrams guest edited), the director has just done a great sit down with Charlie Rose. 

Now Rose can be an enormous chucklehead when interviewing Hollywood types (especially pretty ones), but that doesn’t matter. Abrams is smart enough to make it interesting on his own.

He talks about the influence of Richard Donner’s “Superman,” which he says gave “a kind of legitimacy” to comic book subjects they’d never received before. Donner “respected the characters as much as the audience,” Abrams says. “They were funny. They were real.” (more…)

In my Final Weekend Tracking column posted on Wednesday, I predicted that X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Fox) would reach $92M on opening weekend, despite soft reviews (now only 38% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes). My first fearless forecast of the 2009 summer blockbuster season appears to be close to dead-on (missed by only 5%).

Star-turned-producer Hugh Jackman has scored his second-biggest opening ever and, easily, his biggest as a solo star. Wolverine has mauled the competition with a massive $34.75M opening day (including $5M or so in Thursday midnight sales). That could translate to a 3-day of $86.8M, getting Hollywood’s most lucrative season off to a spectacular start.

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