A Memory of Leonard Nimoy

Leonard Nimoy was more than just Spock on Star Trek.  He was arguably, of all the characters in the single largest fandom in the world, the most influential pop culture actor, director, philanthropist, and writer.  He was an icon.

Those of you who know me and those of you who have visited my home know that I am a huge Star Trek fan. As some of you know, I even have a room dedicated to my Star Trek collection and even put up a Star Trek/nerd tree at Christmas.   I bought my first collection piece at a Duckwall's store while I was still in junior high.   I went to nerd conventions like StarFest before they were cool and  fashionable.  In the 70's, I drove to Fort Collins from Greeley to see Leonard Nimoy speak at CSU  just to see if I could see him.  I didn't.  I did see James Doohan a few months later when he came to UNC to show his favorite episode at the student center.  I suppose you could say it was my first convention.  There was no talk of a movie, then.  There were just dedicated fans who gathered in dorm TV rooms to watch Star Trek.  It is no small part why my kids are so nerdy when it comes to science and fantasy fiction.  I also quit going to Star Trek conventions when it became apparent that those conventions were becoming more about making money off the fans than being for the fans.  When we took our kids to Disneyland, we had to make one stop in Las Vegas.  It was not to gamble or see a show; it was so I could take my family on the Star Trek Experience, aVegas ride at the Hilton.  I played an on-line Star Trek chat game for about a dozen years.  When I quit the game, I had the longest running character and captain in the history of Star Trek: A Call To Duty, which when I first started playing was actually owned by Paramount.  In short, Star Trek was one of the constants of my life since the series first appeared in 1966 when I was nine years old, and I would watch it on an old black and white TV set in my parents' bedroom.


The loss of Leonard Nimoy, whose Spock is unquestionably my favorite character, is actually tough on me.  So I thought I might try and tell you how important this pop culture phenomenon of Star Trek is to people like me.  I know, it all sounds a bit silly, but I am unabashedly a Trekkie or Trekker, and if you would like make fun, believe me when I tell you, I am used to the jokes, the confusion between Star Trek and Star Wars by the uninitiated, and even the days when Shatner told Trekkies to "get a life," and Nimoy wrote his first book, I Am not Spock. So to tell you the meaning of this to us in the Trek kingdom, I thought I would tell you a true story.

In June of 1982, I was working on my Masters degree at Adam State College in Alamosa. I was living in student housing.  My wife had to stay in Fairplay for work, so that means I was mostly on my own, except when I could return to Fairplay or Marilyn could come to Alamosa for a visit.  Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan opened that month.  I went to see it by myself at the small movie theater in downtown Alamosa.  I was not about to miss the opening of a Star Trek movie, even though Star Trek: The Motion Picture was a long and boring disappointment to Trekkies everywhere (there wasn't actually even a term for Star Trek fans).

Since the internet hadn't been born yet, we had to rely on papery things called magazines for information.  It was well-known that Nimoy had not been happy with the making of the first movie. It had lost the feel and direction of the original.  It had become a special effects movie with its dry characterizations and overly long flybys of ships.  Rumors were rampant that he had only agreed to return for the second movie if they would, once and for all, kill Spock.  None in the Star Trek community wanted to believe this was true.

If you haven't seen Wrath of Khan, my first thought is "What's wrong with you?", and if you don't know what happens at the end of the movie, my next thought is "Where have you been living in a cave?" The fact is Spock dies at the end of the movie.  It was a devastating moment for us.  While the funeral at the end of the movie was extremely moving, it was like losing a family member. No, really, it was. Even though, looking back, it was clear that the movie had left an opening to bring back the character, the myth that no one ever dies in Star Trek did not exist.  What made it even worse was that Wrath of Khan was a great movie.  It, unlike its predecessor, had captured the true spirit of Trek that all fans had loved.

But Spock was dead.

The single image that speaks to me to this day of what it meant to be a fan occurred after leaving the theater.  Never had I seen an audience so stunned by a movie's ending. The audience was absolutely silent as we shuffled out,  but in the lobby stood the impact of this iconic character's death.  In the middle of the lobby stood a man who was clearly a biker.  He was a huge man dressed in standard biker clothes including a sleeveless leather vest or jacket with his biker club colors clearly displayed on the back.  He was over six feet tall and weighed at least 250 pounds.  He stood there with a scruffy beard and tied back ponytail with tears of grief streaming down his face.  He was inconsolable, and he didn't care who knew it.


It even took me a great deal of time to recover.  I even made a sweatshirt with the words "Spock Lives" inscribed on it.  It would be several weeks before the those papery bloggy things called magazines began to discuss that Nimoy had actually enjoyed making Khan and may be making a deal to return.  Hope lived.  Spock lived.

The loss of Leonard Nimoy for us, the legions of fans, will be like that biker in the movie theater lobby.  I hope you now understand.

A Time to Remember Who We Are

Too much trivial information is a useless thing.  I honestly don't care if Helena Bonham-Carter and Tim Burton are separating.  I don't care whether or not Popeye's new cartoon will smoke a pipe or not.  These type of things are unimportant.  Too many of these unimportant things have been used to divide us.  I see far too many people who vote "no" on tax issues, or don't vote at all,  and then complain because the county doesn't have funds to run snow plows  or because schools are forced to put thirty in a class of elementary students in order to  just heat the building.  It is a sad commentary when I see towns, which once would have free hot cider downtown along with carolers, have  to slash budgets because they can no longer pay for the security this event incurs.  Once, Colorado Springs had such an event that drew people to the downtown merchants, but those days are as gone as are the colored lights that were once used to color the steam caused fog at the power plant.

Sometimes, it seems we become too involved in the preparation and forget the reason.  No, there is no war on Christmas. I suppose you could count the fact that retailers have Christmas decorations out before Halloween ends just as they already have Valentines out before Christmas ends.  You see, things change and for many folks change is hard.  I am not one to live in the past, despite the previous paragraph.  It is not the loss of those events, but that we sometimes need a little reminder.  You see, too often do I hear folks complaining about this or that which doesn't matter.  We have to remember to take care of each other and to do it as best as we can without bringing our own petty judgments.  We must remember that we are a community, the human community.  We are not the tools of politicians, the wealthy oligarchs, or an agenda-driven newsgroup.


So as this time of year, be it that you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Yule, Kwanzaa, or Festivus or nothing at all, we need to recall that this is our chance to spread a little cheer, give a little joy, and reserve judgement.  So if Santa comes to your house or you are lighting a Menorah or a Yule log, it's time to remember who we are supposed to be, not what others would make of us.

From me to you and yours, Merry Christmas and happy holidays.  I hope your  gift is joy.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies - The Final Chapter Works

I have joked that if Peter Jackson wants to do more of Tolkien's work he should try doing The Hobbit.  There was also that joke that there would be a new release which edits all the films together, but eliminates all the scenes that are not in the book. This special edition movie will be about two hours long.  Despite all this, the movies all work and are a fun ride.  I have never been quite clear on why we need all the other stuff that Jackson included this second trilogy in the world of Tolkien.  There really is no purpose to the inclusion of Legolas, the Council of the White, the love story between the Tauriel - a purely Jackson created character- and Kili, or the starting of the return of Sauron.  For the movies to work these storylines and characters are actually extraneous distractions and filler for the return of the King under the Mountain story. It seems to me, sometimes, that Jackson has become a little too enamored with his special effects and battle scenes.

All this said, I liked  this movie.  No, it's not the Hobbit, I first read when I was in 7th grade.  It is a strong action, adventure fantasy.  I know many people who do not actually know the story of There and Back Again will be very disappointed that the book has no love story between an elf and a dwarf.  There are no orcs who are secretly driven by the spirit of Sauron.  I  must admit that the attack with dwarves on mountain goats was a bit silly.  Still, Jackson leaves the major story intact including all those who survive and do not survive as it occurred in the original story. The defeat of Smaug is spectacular.

The effects are still strong, although a few of the gags such as giant trolls knocking themselves out by running into walls or other objects got a bit repetitive.  The story is still strong enough to carry themes of the evils of greed and finding one's nobility and courage.  The characters are still clean and even serve well carry the themes.  There is still magic in Jackson's direction.  He carefully draws parallels between the Smaug the dragon and the greed of "dragon sick" Thorin Oakenshield. He doesn't  just mention the sickness that plagues Thorin's mind but introduces vocal similarities between the dragon and the dwarf king.  While the final descent into Thorin's battle between his honor and his greed on a lake of gold is a bit over-the-top, it is still visually masterful scene.  It is really the sort of scene that I wish had been included in the second movie when Bilbo should have found his courage in the Smaug's lair.

There should be enough in the third film for the purist of the novel to those who are experiencing The Hobbit solely as a movie to please all.  Original lines from the novel sparkle through including the final lines of Gandalf to Bilbo, "but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!” It is the inclusion that keeps the movie honest.  Even though Bilbo is just a Hobbit, he still has had a great impact.  The movie keeps us attached to the characters so that we feel loss and gain equally, even with characters and plotlines that didn't exist in the book.  I liked The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.  It is well worth your time, just try not to take the dwarves on goats too seriously.

An Homage to 2001

Okay. I know Interstellar is almost out of theaters.  I almost went just a few days after it opened, but I just couldn't get psyched up for a long movie.  I'd also seen a couple of posts from folks that loved it, and a couple of folks that hated it.  Christopher Nolan is not known for his deep movies because most people think of the most recent Batman series.  Few folks seem to recall that he also did Inception and, a personal favorite, Momento.  So that said, I was pleased to see a truly hard core science fiction movie.  Yes, it is a bit long.  Yes, it is complicated.  Yes, there  is the time paradox problem.  Interstellar is at its core, however, hard SciFi.

And it is good hard SciFi.

There are plenty of good sites that will help you understand the complex last act of the movie, so I am not going to go into it here.   And since it is almost out of the theaters, I am not going to spend a long time on a review.  I am going to say the film is well acted and tight in its main and subplots which are all intertwined into one overarching idea.  We need to go to space.  There are a few interesting side comments such as a school's curriculum being rewritten so that the moon landing is taught as the silly conspiracy theory that's been around for years.  It discusses a dying Earth without using the words "climate change" or "global warming." It is also clear that is why the planet is dying.

The movie is epic in scale and clearly an homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Matthew McConaughey as protagonist,  Cooper, is the explorer in the spirit of Dave Bowman.  Cooper, in a sense, becomes the Starchild that Bowman became in 2001.  At its core, Interstellar is an apocalyptic movie with a hopeful ending.  As Cooper says, "We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt."  In 2001, Bowman announces as he enters his own wormhole, "My God - it's full of stars."  Later as the Starchild in 2010 he announces, "I understand how you feel. You see, it's all very clear to me now. The whole thing. It's wonderful."  The parallels and tribute to Interstellar's game changing predecessor 2001 are clear.  Interstellar also maintains its own clean structure and themes without becoming a remake.  It is a movie worthy of its audience.

Maybe, Interstellar will get us to look at the stars.

Hunger Games: The Mocking Jay, Part I - Succeeds

A few reviewers have stated that Mocking Jay, the third installment of the Hunger Games series, is a bit slower than its predecessors.  I am okay with this.  While Mocking Jay is not all special effects and action sequences, it is well acted.  I am always amazed at Jennifer Lawerence's skills as an actor.  She is a natural. What is more, she is surrounded by consummate performers. There is Donald Sutherland as President Snow who is now allowing subtle cracks to appear in the sanity of his character. There are also the ever present character performances of the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Woody Harrelson.  I for one appreciate character development far more than over-blown action sequences and CGI effects. So it is a good thing that Hunger Games has chosen to let its actors work rather than try to 'wow' us with effects.


It is for this reason that Hunger Games: The Mocking Jay, Part 1 succeeds.  It is not that it has a particularly complex plot. It doesn't.  If anything, Part 1 fails to make it clear that many of the events that occur in the movie are weeks even months apart in the book.  Perhaps, the movie relies a bit too much on Lawerence's ability to cry.  The scenes of her with tears running down her cheeks, work well for the movie though and are not over-the-top. So does the character development of other characters such as Katniss Everdeen's once boyfriend, Gale Hawthorne who is played by Liam Hemsworth. Another character who continues to grow in the movies is Effie Trinket, the vacuous escort for Katniss and Peta to the Games.  Effie, played by Elizabeth Banks, grows more and more with each movie to become loyal friend and confidant.
 

I also must admit I find the theme of the movie to be a truly relevant one if not a bit over-simplified. It is not just a good vs. evil theme. It is a statement not just about an oppressed populace, but a statement about the have and have-nots.  If you will, it is the story of the masses who must oppose the one or two percent who have bought and control their world.  Not to be too political, there is clearly a struggle for democracy. Effie even makes an off-hand remark when she notes, "Everything old can be made new again, like democracy."  There is, in the story, a clear cost that must be paid. A revolution has cost for both establishment and rebel.   The question is what is the price?  Change is never cheap and neither is freedom.  As it says in the movie:

Hunger Games: Mocking Jay, Part 1 is well worth the watch. 

Not Voting = Not So Logical

So you've decided not to vote or you're just too busy to do so or just too lazy to be bothered or you don't think your vote will count.  I know some who say, "Until they offer me a candidate, I am not going to vote for any of them." I understand the disenchantment with our current slate of candidates, but your distrust - your dislike - is not a first.  Every generation has had this feeling.  Waiting for a candidate that will be one of the greats is kind of like waiting for that special someone to discover you while you sit in your home.  It's like waiting to win the lottery without ever buying a ticket.  Not voting is not a protest because too many other people don't vote for too many other reasons.  Not voting in protest while waiting for another better candidate just isn't logical.  Historically speaking, we all hope for that one great candidate rising to the top, but it remains a craps shoot.  There really is something to that old statement "some have greatness thrust upon them" especially in politics.


Take for example Franklin D. Roosevelt.  He was actually ran by the political bosses not because he was the best candidate, but because he was related to Teddy and carried the Roosevelt name when he first started in politics.  No one dreamed that he would actually become president, let alone be elected to the office four times.  Lincoln, too, was considered a weak candidate.  Truman was supposed to lose to Dewey. Washington, hero of the Revolution, lost most of the  battles he fought. Teddy Roosevelt was sure his career was over when he was nominated and became vice-president. After he was president, he feared that he would never be remembered as a great president because he had no major war.He believed every great leader had a war to lead his people through.  He was told on a regular basis growing up that his life span would be short.


The problem is whether you are voting for Lincoln or Harding, you are never really sure if you will get a great leader or Richard Nixon, who won by a landside, by the way.  Most politicians, be they state or federal,also come and go.  A few are memorable for their leadership, like Daniel Webster or John C. Calhoun or Robert LaFollette.  There are also some who will live in infamy for their abuse of the office like Joe McCarthy or Boss Tweed or Huey Long.

 There is also that in not voting, you aren't just not voting for candidates.  You are also not voting for ballot measures and amendments and the host of people who will effect you on a local level.  No, waiting for the right candidate ignores more than just your disdain for the current crop of politicians. You also ignore those who are counting on your vote to help them make a statement by passing measures that will help schools. Your vote can help to  prevent amendments from taking away the vote.  Your vote may even get one that limits advertising and dark money.

So choosing not to vote as a protest really does nothing.  No change will occur for you. You did not participate.  If your too busy or too lazy or think your vote won't count then guess what? You aren't just ignoring a great gift you are also letting down a bunch of people who need you to vote.  You are actually making sure that the oligarchs win.   The specail interests and dark money are counting on you protesting or believing your vote doen't count. History may be passing you by.  After all, you get the government you don't show up for.

John Wick Is A True Action Flick

When I first heard about John Wick, to be honest, I was a bit uncertain.  Keanu Reeves has always been something of an unknown quantity.  When I heard one of the advertising tag lines of "the best role from Keanu since The Matrix," my first thought was well that wouldn't be too hard.  John Wick is, however, really a good,  classic style action flick.


The key for Keanu has always been not to give him too much to say.  It's not really his skill to deliver lines that hurts his performance.  It is just that for as long as he performs, his voice will always be tagged as a part of Bill and Ted.  I know, it's an unfortunate thing to happen, but it is also the way it is. John Wick is a retired hitman.  He is actually more of a hitman's hitman.  He is the killer according to Russian bad guy, Viggo, that you send to kill the bogey man.

The movie starts with the retired Wick mourning the passing of his wife, the woman who got him out of being a hitman.  From there, of course, a series of events cause John Wick to come out of retirement and go after the very bad people which he once worked for.  It is a revenge story.  The central bad guy Viggo Tarasov is played by Michael Nyqvist.  He has an unruly son, Iosef, played by Alfie Allen.

Into the mix we add fellow killers.  One we are none too sure if he is a bad guy or a good guy.  He is Marcus performed by William Dafoe.  There is also Ms. Perkins played by Adrianne Palicki who is a definite baddie.  The movie has a few twists and will easily hold your attention.

After we spend just a little time  at the beginning of the movie getting the sad and silent John Wick story, the movie kicks off.  The action sequences are quick with over-the-top violence.  It is a continuous shoot 'em up and far away from realistic.   They are frequently juxtapositioned with ironic or funny moments.  The timing of these scenes brought open and delighted laughs from the audience.  It is the kind of movie that you can root for the ruthless anti-hero because he is also the legendary action hero.

 John Wick is rated "R" for violence and language.  I enjoyed the movie. If your looking for a true action movie that hasthe right elements and something that isn't terribly deep but just fun storytelling, then John Wick will easily fit the bill.