#olatunde osunsamni

[achampnator]

Paramount hat gestern publik gemacht, dass sie Michelle Yeoh als Lead für den kommenden Star Trek Film “Star Trek: Section 31” gecastet haben. Darin wird sie Emperor Philippa Georgiou spielen. Das Drehbuch schreibt Craig Sweeney und Olatunde Osunsamni übernimmt die Regie. Es wird der erste “Star Trek” Film sein, der extra für den Streamingdienst Paramount Plus produziert wird. Die Arbeiten am Film beginnen im Laufe von 2023.

[defconprime]

Discovery trading card series 1 number B16.

[douxreviews]

Star Trek: Discovery - ‘Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2′ Review

"Let's see what the future holds."

By nature I love brevity: Star Trek: Discovery delivers on the promises of the season in its dramatic finale that warps off into Season Three ready to try something new. My predictions were mostly correct, with a few surprises. Some of those surprises were substantially more welcome than others.

Last week's episode made us a whole lot of promises and set up a lot of things to happen here. All the emotional stakes of that episode hinged on the fulfillment of those promises and set-ups, though, so no matter what, if they didn't follow through we were going to feel cheated. I went into this finale with a small bit of trepidation that they might fake us out and not deliver, but those fears were happily quashed. If nothing else, I want to applaud the show for delivering on its promises, and for doing so in a way that provided entertainment and diversion for an hour and left me feeling mostly satisfied.

But, of course, I do have to talk about what went wrong. Most of this episode's problems, and indeed the whole season's problems, are the result of logical inconsistencies. For example, if they had a map of the red bursts the whole time, why couldn't they figure out where each burst was going to appear? Even if they didn't know which burst corresponded to which one on the map, after the first three they should have known the location of all seven. That was the main thing about the season as a whole that bothered me.

The biggest and most egregious problem in 'Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2' is the entire situation involving Cornwell and the torpedo. How contrived can you get, really? This seems to me to be the most stupid and pointless sacrifice since Captain America: The First Avenger, and it's certainly the dumbest thing this show has ever done. I can't even begin to fathom why anyone would think that little tiny door could do anything at all when we were told it would take out four decks/half the ship. If the door is so powerful, why isn't the whole ship made out of the same material? How is the window still intact after the blast? For that matter, why the actual heck did they put a window in a blast door? Even the reason Cornwell decided to stick around in that room with the torpedo was hopelessly contrived. Pike made some very good points about time travel and his future, and she dismissed them for no reason at all. Very disappointing and completely unnecessary. Jayne Brook and Admiral Cornwell deserve way better.

The second major issue involves Controlland and his death. First and foremost, if the Control AI was destroyed when Georgiou killed it, why do they even still need to go to the future? If destroying Control was as easy as magnetizing a whatever for a few minutes, why not focus your efforts on that rather than the time travel stuff? They even had a golden opportunity to solve all these problems and bring back some nice continuity at the same time. Why not just have Georgiou use the spores to send Controlland somewhere else, like Lorca did with Burnham way back in 'Context is for Kings'? Plus, the magnetizing the whatever solution is really dumb and sounds contrived.

All this makes it sound like I hated 'Sorrow II.' I didn't. It was largely entertaining, and despite those two major things that grated on me and a few other minor gripes, the finale did its job well. It managed partly to earn the melodrama of 'Sorrow I' and to wrap up the season's arcs in a neat and tidy manner. Let me dive further into the things I liked.

Firstly, Olatunde Osunsamni's direction was on point this week. His stylistic, swooping camera and weird, dynamic directorial choices are actually really well-suited to big action setpieces like this one. While I may not like his apparent vow to never allow the camera to be still at any moment, even in dialogue or other low-energy sequences, Osunsamni gets to infuse his energy here into a show that warrants it. On that same note, all the action was quite good and interesting to watch. The production values on this show continue to be absolutely through the roof, and it works really, really well.

I also loved, though it can very easily be dismissed as fan service, the ending with Pike, Spock, and the Enterprise. The show is certainly leaning into fan hopes for a show centered around them, for no clear reason. Clearly, they could very well do something like that, and it would be highly anticipated and probably very well received. It's ultimately up to the producers, but I really think that if they do intend to do it, it will have to be really far down the pipeline. If it were coming in the near future, we'd have heard something of it by now.

The portion of the end that deals with Discovery's supposed breaches of canon was a long time in coming. I think I'd made my peace that time travel would fix it all about a month ago, so bringing my feelings about it back is a bit difficult. If the writers had all this planned from the beginning, then kudos to them. If not, then at least they found a decent way to fix everything they'd broken. One of the things that's in the grand tradition of Star Trek is taking mistakes and discrepancies and using them for the benefit of later stories, so I'm quite pleased that this occurred here. Did they have to force it because it was necessary for the show? Yes. But let's not lose sight of the fact that it was necessary for the show.

A few surprises lurked in this episode, even though the resolution went more or less as anticipated. The first of these was that Georgiou was on the Disco as it went off into the wild blue yonder. I had expected, since Michelle Yeoh's Section 31 series is coming, that Georgiou would be left behind in the past in light of that. Not so here. This raises many questions about that Section 31 show, what Yeoh's role in it will be, and how she will play into DIS Season 3, so many that I won't go into them all here. Suffice it to say, I was surprised, and I will be interested to see where it goes from here.

Secondly, I was surprised at the arrival of everything the rest of the season had done, now coming back to help the Disco accomplish its mission. Although I suppose everything did have to be a part of a grand design like Pike and Spock have been saying all along, I was not expecting Siranna and the Kelpiens in particular. A nice touch, certainly, as was the timely arrival of L'Rell and her Klingon armada. Speaking Klingon under heavy makeup does tend to work much better when it's being yelled angrily at one's enemies in the heat of battle than it does when discussing Imperial politics while sitting at home. Plus, Mary Chieffo got to say 'Today is a good day to die' before the show left her behind.

So overall, I think I liked it. It did what it needed to do, and not a whole ton more. What more it did was mixed material, but so is this show in general. I left it feeling satisfied, and even excited for the road ahead. Take her out, folks. Let's see what she can do.

Pensees:

-Holy crap, that's a lot of shuttles. Voyager's jealous.

-I half expected Reno to die, and Po to go to the future. I'm not sad that those things didn't happen, though.

-Keep on being sassy as heck, Dr. Pollard.

-I thought Burnham and Spock's goodbye was just fine the first time, in the shuttlebay. At the end of the episode it was terribly overdone, although Ethan Peck did his darnedest to help it along.

-Is Anthony Rapp's return to the show for Season Three in doubt? They left his life still in danger at the end of the episode. I hope not; I like Stamets. His resolution with Culber felt a little out of place amid the chaos of the episode, though.

-Lots of visual cues to Star Trek: The Motion Picture in this episode, from Burnham's travel through time to the same streaky-light wormhole effect when the ship does the same.

-That really is a dang useful blast door. Voyager's jealous.

-Number One STILL doesn't have a canonical name. Why couldn't she just have given it in the debriefing scene. It's not hard!

-So Tyler has been made the head of Section 31 for now. I guess that means he'll definitely be in Yeoh's series, right?

-Clean-shaven Spock in uniform was great to see, and the shot that panned out from the bridge to the ship in space was a definite nod to 'The Cage.'

-Props to Jeff Russo for his awesome mix of the classic TOS theme and the DIS theme. I really like the music of this show in general.

Quotes:

Po: "First, I invoke diplomatic immunity for stealing this shuttle."

Reno: "I'm going, I'm going! Get off my ass! Sir! Get off my ass, sir!"

Saru: "Promise me you'll be safe." Everything: *continues exploding*

Burnham: "So you're asking me to take a leap of faith." Spock: "One that is only logical."

Controlland: "Where's my data?" Nhan, searching for the most useless response possible: "Hell!"

Controlland: "This doesn't have to be this hard!" Georgiou: "Not hard is boring, and I hate boring."

Number One: "Plans A and B didn't work. This is the Hail Mary part of the operation."

Burnham: "Find that person who seems farthest from you, and reach for them. Reach for them."

4.5 out of 6 really useful blast doors.

CoramDeo is a reviewer, not a bricklayer.

[camrenbicondova]

I don’t normally like doing this but... I really love(d) this scene. This was the third take. I remember it was a tandem day (shooting 2 episodes at once— finishing one and starting another), and we had wrapped this scene after the second take. They were rushing everyone out so the other unit could start, but I didn’t feel right. I felt like i did a good job but, i felt like i could do more. I asked Tunde (Olatunde Osunsamni: Director, who was being pressured to wrap it up), if I could do it again, told him I felt like i could do more. He said, ”Alright, let’s do it then.” And this happened. The scene turned a completely different direction than I planned. I mean, I thought i was gonna be angry the whole time... then this happened. and for that i love it. Ivana Milicevic is a beauty to work with. 🙇🏼‍♀️❤️✨

[kubrickvontrier]

THE FOURTH KIND (2009) - MOVIE REVIEW

I had no clue what to expect going into The Fourth Kind. I remember seeing ads for it back when it came out in '09 but it's been erased from my mind since then. My two roommates recently called it one of the scariest films they'd ever seen, so I just HAD to give it a shot. I knew nothing about it other than it was a horror movie starring an actress who I was a moderate fan of, and that was about it. So, I finally saw the movie, and....ehhhhh.

This is one of those movies that, even though it can be interesting, engaging, and even at time, successfully eerie, feels like it doesn't know what it wants to be. The film is perhaps most notable for it's side-by-side comparison of "real footage" and reenactments of the supernatural occurrences the film's plot center around. This is also the movie's biggest downfall. The reason those "real footage" horror movies exist at all is to contrast the regular horror movies, and trying to mix them together the way The Fourth Kind does is one of the biggest movie missteps I can think of in recent years. It's like mixing together water and fire and expect something new to come out of them. The Fourth Kind is an a occurrence in which opposites definitely do not attract.

Another detractor of this film is that the writing, front to back, is absolutely abysmal. The director Olatunde Osunsanmi also wrote the screenplay, and it's abundantly apparent. The majority of dialogue is either badly worded, way too jumpy, goes on for way too long, or simply just doesn't make any sense. For example, there was a scene towards the beginning of the 3rd act of the film in which Mila Jovovich's character, Abbey, is standing in a room with her son Ronnie, and 2 other police officers, one of which is played by Will Patton (perhaps currently most known for his role of Colonel Dan Weaver on TNT's 'Falling Skies'). Will Patton's character shouts abruptly "Everyone out of the room except Abbey and Ronnie!". I'm not going to explain why that's unbelievably awful, and if it doesn't phase you, you're probably among the small group go individuals who hail this film as some sort of cinematic gold.

That's not to say, however, that there aren't any positives to The Fourth Kind. The main reason to watch the film, and the aspect that kept me interested the entire 98 minutes is the performances. Mila Jovovich is fantastic as the lead role (well, the "reenactment" version, that is) and the acting is strong from everyone else, including minor roles. Aside from that, I also found the story riveting. The idea of an extraterrestrial force steadily abducting Abbey's patients, rather than the generic possessed-by-the-devil plot we've seen more times to count with a meter stick, is utterly fascinating, I thought. I loved the underlying symbolism of the owl, and things finally begin to get heavy with the aliens, it's extremely entertaining.

Unfortunately, whenever something scary happen, or at least, something that's meant to be scary, it's completely ruined by the poor execution/addition of the side-by-side real/fake story. When it happens in the middle of a high-momentum scene, and the movie goes 24 split-screen, not only does it take the audience completely out of the moment, but it stops being scary altogether, and instead, becomes annoying, slightly pretentious, and overall just worthy of a big sigh (which, I actually did several times throughout).

Altogether, The Fourth Kind is not terrible. In fact, I might even go out on a limb and call it "good". Did I like it? Meh; I don't know. It's a interesting story and construct with strong performances on all fronts, but is sadly juxtapositioned by horrible writing, irritating and jumpy editing to accompany the badly mixed filmmaking concepts, and overall just poor execution of what could have been a very fresh, energizing horror movie.

I kind of wish someone would remake this and pick a side on which style of movie it should be, but keep the same story, actors and actresses, and just make it better.

I would recommend The Fourth Kind solely on the basis that it's a good example of how over-saturation of a certain thing can ruin a movie. If you're interesting in making horror movies, or just movies in general, I definitely say check it out (it is currently available on Netflix at the time that I write this), but if you're looking for something to enthrall you, grab you at the neck, and ravish you around for an hour and half, I say skip it. It was a movie that was pretty forgotten about after it's run in the theaters, and now I understand why.

Overall rating:  5.5/10

[defconprime]

TREKMATCH! # 615 - Short Trek's "Calypso" vs 1974's Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla

GODZILLA VS MECHAGODZILLA aka ゴジラ対メカゴジラ aka GOJIRA TAI MEKAGOJIRA

Some space aliens make Godzilla start wreaking havoc on Japan except he's not real, he's a dang robot! Luckily the real Godzilla shows up to save the day while some scientists run around a UFO. I kinda fell asleep for an hour in the middle but I still feel confident saying this one's not very good.

GRADE: D-

STAR TREK: SHORT TREKS - "Calypso"

Discovery, now sentient but abandoned for a thousand years (does that mean this one is set in the 4000s?) picks up a dude and woos him with dancing and waffles and saving his life from the cold depths of space. It's pretty good but now that Discovery season three is over it makes a lot less sense - like why doesn't Discovery look like the refit it got at Federation HQ for example?

GRADE: C

Victory to Trek, so Movies are up 309-306!

[defconprime]

TREKMATCH! # 618 - Disco's "That Hope is You Part 2" vs 1995's Godzilla Vs Destoroyah

GODZILLA VS DESTOROYAH aka ゴジラvsデストロイア aka GOJIRA TAI DESTOROYAH

I'm just jumping around doing one Godzilla a decade before the new one comes out so I may miss some plot points, but the Godzilla series will often ignore some sequels and not others so I think I'll be fine. Here Godzilla is gonna die for good (uh he turned into a skeleton in part 1, that wasn't for good?) except he's building up to a nuclear reaction that will destroy all of planet Earth. On top of that, an even meaner monster, Destoroyah, who evolved from the original oxygen destroyer that killed Godzilla in the first place is doing some general trampling on Japan. Luckily G-Force is there to do some fake ass 90s computer hacking to save the day with a little help from Godzilla Jr.

GRADE: C

STAR TREK: DISCOVERY - "That Hope is You Part 2"

Light spoilers for the newest Star Trek out there, but this is the one I picked at random! Burnham, Book, and the Discovery bridge crew fight off the Orion invaders while on Planet Scream Saru, Culber, Gray, and Adira try to convince the dilithium toddler to stop throwing tantrums. It's a decent season finale but why why why why when they fight on the turbolift is Discovery hollow and bigger than it ought to be?

GRADE: C

Victory to Trek, so movies are up 310-308!

[defconprime]

TREKMATCH! # 602 - Discovery's "Point of Light" vs 1997's The Night Flier

THE NIGHT FLIER

A sleazy tabloid reporter gets sent on assignment (uh did they ever really get "sent on assignment" or did they just make up Bat Boy at their desks?) to investigate the story of a vampire who flies a little Piper plane around at night and sucks airport employees' blood. It's a ridiculous concept but that's what you get whenever somebody adapts a Stephen King short story into a feature- it's always a propeller plane vampire or killer trucks or a demonic laundry press or a haunted English teacher or something.

GRADE: C-

STAR TREK: DISCOVERY - "Point of Light"

Tilly is dealing with a mushroom ghost while on Qo'noS Ash and L'Rell are dealing with typical Klingon drama involving a variety of silly shape swords. Hey shoutout to Discovery for actually making Klingon blood pink, something no other Trek show did after Star Trek VI established that as canon.

GRADE: B-

Victory to Trek, so movies are up 304-298!

Stephen King is down to Trek 16-17!

[defconprime]

TREKMATCH! # 245 - Disco's "What's Past Is Prologue" vs 2006's The Devil Wears Prada

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA

A young college grad who wants to be a serious writer slums it by taking a job at Jane or Elle or Vogue or whatever generic version they make up for this movie. It turns out though her boss is way mean because she expects her assistants to get things right and actually try at their jobs, wotta jerk! Of course, and the movie (briefly) points this out, if she was a man nobody would think she was so horrible, but you know, the patriarchy has its little paws on everything.

GRADE: C+

STAR TREK: DISCOVERY - "What's Past Is Prologue"

Evil Georgiou and evil Lorca fight for control of the evil galaxy in the evil universe. Meanwhile good Burnham and her good friends try to use a big ole explosion to get back to their (supposedly) good universe. There's some good fights and whatnot, and of course the ending sets up a whole buncha stuff for season 2 and beyond. One thing, though, (spoiler?) is when they get back nine months after they've left the Klingons have taken over most of Federation space, but that just seems extremely unfeasible given the immense distances involved in fictional interstellar empires. I also never really thought the Klingons, even with cloaking technology, were supposed to be so much more advanced than Starfleet, but writers like to take shortcuts!

GRADE: B-

Victory to Trek, putting Trek up 125-120!

[douxreviews]

Star Trek: Discovery - ‘Point of Light’ Review

Burnham: "Show me a teenage girl who's never cried. You can't. I should know, I'm a xenoanthropologist."

By nature I love brevity: After last week's primarily standalone 'New Eden,' 'Point of Light' jumps right back into the season's arcs, developing some stories and beginning others. Most of it works, but a few slight issues remain. All in all, a strong episode.

The Klingons last season were very divisive. Though some appreciated the differences because they helped the Klingons feel alien again, others hated the very different general look of a race that has been a Star Trek staple since TOS. Specifically, a few things bothered fans. The Klingons' lack of hair was one; likewise the differently designed ships (especially one that was called the D7 but looked nothing like the TOS design) were hard to get over. The sequences that took place entirely in Klingon with subtitles got very tedious after a little while, as well; it's much easier to follow when you're able to understand what they're saying.

The Klingon portions of 'Point of Light' felt like an extremely overt attempt at correcting these issues. From the very beginning with the D7 to the deliberate switch from Klingon to English in the final scene, the whole thing appeared to be designed for the purpose of showing fans that the show would be doing something different. And each change, such as the hair on the Klingons' heads, was pointed out deliberately to the audience through lines like 'So the Klingons are growing their hair again post-war?' While I appreciate the modifications, and the explanations mostly make sense, it was at times a little too on-the-nose. I like that they're going out of their way to fix the problems of Season One, but every time they point to their solutions and say, 'See? We know you didn't like it and it's all better now!' it somehow feels both cheap and heavy-handed at the same time.

As far as the other half of the episode goes, three of this season's primary storylines progressed, some of them substantially. The first story that got some progress here is that of the red bursts and the Red Angel. The only thing that we really learned here is that Spock really has been seeing the Red Angel since childhood, and that it helped him save Michael. At first glance, this seems like more of the same, but when you think about it it's actually quite revealing. The fact that Spock saw visions of the Angel that were clear enough for him to get a message is interesting enough, but the fact that that message resulted in Burnham's life being saved is remarkable. This means two things. First, it reinforces that the Angel is not some vague presence, but that it actually intervenes actively in people's lives. Secondly, and I think more importantly, this is the second time that an appearance of the Angel has coincided with the rescue of Michael Burnham. The first was in the pilot, when Pike saved her, and here it was Spock saving her. It says to me that the Angel has a specific interest in Burnham and her life, which may be very interesting to watch considering Burnham's reservations about believing in a sort of higher power.

The appearance of Amanda also led to revelations about the Spock storyline. We learned that his condition has developed to the extent that Starfleet is keeping it classified at the highest level. It's telling that Pike tries to follow the rules, but is all too happy to break them when the need arises. This simply further cements him as a classic starship Captain, perhaps even too classic. One thing you could never say about Lorca is that we've seen Captains like him before. He was new and different; Pike is not. While this may not necessarily be a bad thing for the show at this point, I hope Pike is given distinguishing traits that will give his character more depth. The other tidbit of information we learned was that Burnham hurt Spock intentionally and for his safety. One can very easily see a young Spock, curious about humanity and unsatisfied by the intentionally reserved side of his mother, following Burnham around and wanting to be involved in her life. It would be appropriately devastating to have a childhood idol such as that hurt you deeply and intentionally. I only hope the final reveal of what Burnham did to him measure up to what they've built. The other thing is that the Federation believes Spock murdered three of his doctors. Burnham and Amanda aren't certain, which is pretty scary.

The last storyline that gets developed, and this one much more than the others combined, is Tilly's Seeing Dead People plot. Over the course of this single episode, we learn that May's appearance is connected to the green spore that landed on Tilly's shoulder at the end of last season, discover that May is a parasite who needs Tilly for something and calls Stamets the Captain, and pull the parasite off of Tilly in a bit of a cliffhanger ending. While it does feel a tiny bit rushed, I'm glad they aren't dragging this out. There are a limited number of episodes this season, and if they have to drag out a storyline to fill some time, they definitely don't have enough story to write for it. The other thing is that the way it would be dragged out would be more scenes where Tilly looks crazy to everyone around her when she talks to someone they can't see. Scenes like this are very hard to watch, and they get progressively more annoying the more of them there are. Moving on right to fighting the parasite means that we have less of these scenes to sit through. I have to applaud Bahia Watson for her great performance here; after playing 'unsettling, but not aggressively so' last episode, Watson suddenly turns the creep factor up to eleven in a way that both shocks me with its suddenness and at the same time feels like a natural and not-at-all rushed progression of the character. It will be interesting to see what I can only assume to be the finale of this storyline next episode.

All in all, I liked this episode a great deal. Several of the reveals surprised me (L'Rell and TyVoq's baby; the new information about the Red Angel), and I liked the way that Mirror Georgiou is being used to bring TyVoq back into the story. Though some of the Klingon bits made me roll my eyes at their blatant 'we're fixing what you didn't like' tone, on the whole this was a good episode. It's a bit hard to judge the developments of the ongoing stories until they come to full fruition, but 'Point of Light' seems like a good arc progression.

Strange New Worlds: Q'o'nos doesn't count as a new planet, so we didn't go anywhere new this time.

New Life and New Civilizations: We learned this week that May is a new type of life form that we haven't seen before.

Pensees:

-I really liked Burnham and Tilly's relationship in this one. It really felt like a strong, healthy friendship, and the way Burnham solved the problem made sense.

-One of my friends is really turned off by the invasions of Spock's privacy this season. First Burnham entered his quarters, and now they're breaking into his medical files.

-Another director's credit for Olatunde Osunsamni. She did a fine job with this one.

-They're calling Lt. Owosekun 'Owo' now. Was that an intentional cultural reference? I bet it was.

-The reveal of Amanda worked well. If I hadn't known she'd be in the episode, I would have been surprised.

-I like the idea of using the D7 as a way to unite the Klingon houses. If we go with the Season One idea that the houses have been split and in disarray, which explains the vastly different ships we saw that season, the one standardized design works well.

-Kolsha, Kol's father, was played by Kenneth Mitchell. He played his own character's father, which works, I guess.

-Spock's been taking EQ tests. It's good to see EQ being used as an accepted practice in the future, even if it is a fictional future.

-I liked the use of the split-screen effect when Burnham and Tyler were talking. It helped sell their emotional distance.

-It appears Tilly is prone to both giving up and making rash decisions when she's stressed or embarrassed. That's a good trait to give a character.

-Why the heck does Georgiou need the holographic face disguiser AND the Black Manta mask?

-Severed heads, especially severed baby heads, even if they are fake, is darker than Star Trek's been before.

-The new Section 31 starship looks kinda neat. I like the multi-level bridge.

-Tyler sent the baby to Boreth, which is the only connection to this episode's title. The legend believed by the monks of Boreth relates Kahless' promise that he will return 'on one of those points of light,' referring to the stars.

-So, uh... I know why Tyler isn't shocked by Georgiou, but wasn't she, well, dinner last time L'Rell saw her? Just sayin'.

-I don't think Javid Iqbal Shazad Latif quite got the memo about the less stilted, more natural dialogue this season.

Quotes:

Burnham: "You didn't betray your friend, Captain. You followed protocol." Pike: "That's easier to say than to believe."

L'Rell, to TyVoq: "You should not care what everyone sees when they look at you."

Georgiou: "The freaks are more fun."

4.5 out of 6 unnecessary Black Manta masks.

CoramDeo is climbing a mountain. Why is he climbing a mountain?