YouTube - i made old star trek look like new star trek!
ToS + lens flares!
13 May 2009
12 May 2009
11 May 2009
Star Trek Fashion Smackdown
Loved the retro-chic uniforms in the new film. One gripe: there’s no apparent rank insignia on them. On the original series stripes on the cuffs served this purpose.
10 May 2009
08 May 2009
MacGuffin Watch 2009
As the summer movie season revs up it’s fun to look at tropes of action movie plot development. Today: the MacGuffin. If Wikipedia is to be believed, Alfred Hitchcock said:
[We] have a name in the studio, and we call it the “MacGuffin”. It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is almost always the necklace and in spy stories it is most always the papers.
Most film textbooks I’ve read cite the eponymous statue in The Maltese Falcon. Another example would be the magic rocks in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (or the Ark of the Covenant, or the Holy Grail, or the Cystal Skull). In its most pure form, what the MacGuffin won’t affect the film at all. The villains want something. The heroes want to stop them from getting it. In a fantasy story it might be a magical weapon, while in a 007 movie maybe it’s nuclear launch codes. What’s important is that the MacGuffin provides a reason for the characters to come into conflict.
I’ll update this post, and probably Twitter, with the object in question for each summer movie I go see.
- Star Trek: first out of the gate for me, and mostly this one is a chase. I guess Spock’s red matter would be the MacGuffin.
- Terminator Salvation: it’s basically a rescue film for Kyle Reese, so I guess he is the MacGuffin here.
07 May 2009
TiVo Series 4 Wishlist -- Observation Point
I haven’t used an HD TiVo but may be switching to one soon-ish. I didn’t realize it didn’t already understand how to distinguish/prioritize HD vs. SD versions of the same show.
06 May 2009
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