Simul-Review: Star Trek Into Darkness

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by Grace Crawford and Thom Yee

poster

All images courtesy of Paramount Pictures, Bad Robot Productions, K/O Paper Products, Skydance Productions.

Grace: I try not to remember a lot about my childhood—not for any emotionally crippling reasons, but because I had short hair and John Lennon glasses and small children would ask me if I was a boy or a girl—but there are a few things that stick out to me. A tree in my backyard. A pink-and-blue plastic play kitchen. Reading books by a nightlight long after I was supposed to be asleep. And just a ridiculous amount of Star Trek.

My stepfather was a big fan, my mother supported him, and my brother got into it with such enthusiasm that he had doodles of the Enterprise all over his school binders. All of this meant that I, the odd one out—my sister was too young to notice or care what we watched—had to sit through endless hours of Star Trek or spend the evening staring at the walls in my room. Which were white. And boring. So I picked the option that at least had colour.

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Star Trek (2009)

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by Thom Yee

Star Trek poster

Star Trek images courtesy of Paramount Pictures

We hit a bit of a snag this week, so while this may not be THE Star Trek review we’d planned to post today, it is at least A Star Trek review.

J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek is my second favourite movie of all time and is constantly vying for first place. I say that as somebody who grew up neither a Trekkie nor Trekker, without much thought towards Star Trek vs. Star Wars, and with no real opinion of Kirk or Picard. Unlike generations of fans who grew up on the show and became engineers because of Scotty, cold, logical scientists because of Spock, or fan fiction writers because they’re losers, I watched some Star Trek (but only a bit) simply because it wasn’t usually bad and my dad watched it. But — through The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and whatever else followed — I never really liked any of it. Before the summer of 2009, when I thought about Star Trek in general, I mostly thought of cramped, sparsely decorated sets, boring protocol, and older men using strained metaphors, talking about prime directives and like that.

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Hawkeye (issues 1-6)

by Thom Yee

Hawkeye 1

Hawkeye images courtesy of Marvel Worldwide, Inc. and Walt Disney Studios

In a world full of superstrong, invulnerable, flying people who can knock you unconscious with a flick of their fingers or vaporize you just by looking in your direction, the regular-guy (and girl) superheroes have it pretty tough. The ones who survive in this kind of world often have some combination of Olympic-level athleticism, intensive combat training, high-tech gadgets, and massive financial resources to bring to bear. They’re driven by tragic events from their childhood; they have an unshakeable resolve in their war on crime; they’ve trained for most of their lives to at least be the hero their city deserves (if not the hero it needs). Through hard work, constant vigilance, and fanatical determination, they stand at the peak of human potential, because in a superhuman world, they need to be the best of the best.

Then there’s Hawkeye.  When power-mad gods leading intergalactic armies threaten the Earth… he brings a bow and arrow.

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Simul-Review: Iron Man 3

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by Thom Yee and Grace Crawford

Iron Man 3 - Poster

Iron Man 3 images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios

Thom:  When it came time to review Iron Man 3, I thought I’d start out with a bunch of antithetical statements:

  • Iron Man 2 was just as good as the first one.
  • The Incredible Hulk was really good.
  • The Avengers could’ve been better.
  • Thor is the best Marvel Studios movie so far.

Now of course, those are just my opinions (and no, I’m not just a contrarian [or at least I’m trying not to be]), but that’s the way I’ve felt about the Marvel Studios movies so far.  I still remember the summer of 2008 when they first started and being the only one who was more impressed with The Incredible Hulk than Iron Man (remember, Iron Man came out in May of that year, followed by The Incredible Hulk just over a month later).

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Mad Men (Seasons 1-3)

by Grace Crawford

All images courtesy of AMC Television and Weiner Bros., Silvercup Studios, and Lionsgate Television.

So first order of business. I just finished my third year of university (yay me) and my fourth is my practicum. This was my first week at an ad agency (also yay me), and in honour of that I thought I would do a Mad Men review, because I was silly enough to think that watching Mad Men would be adequate research for the fast-paced world of advertising. Pro tip: it’s really not.

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Simul-Review: Silver Linings Playbook

by Thom Yee and Grace Crawford

Silver Linings Playbook poster

Silver Linings Playbook images courtesy of The Weinstein Company

Thom: Mental illness is a serious and pervasive issue in today’s society and it behooves us all to take it seriously and to treat those who suffer from these maladies with respect.

Or so I’m told. As far as I can tell, mental illness has had no appreciable impact on any significant element of my life. No appreciable impact that is, except for almost every customer that walks into the A/V shop I work at once a week, mostly for the discount. For those that don’t know, I work and live in downtown Edmonton, and it seems like at least every other customer who walks into my store suffers from some chemical imbalance, whether it’s the old lady hermit who’s constantly buying different TV antennas and can’t stop complaining about having to pay so much to Shaw when she only wants to watch CBC, the guy who works at the nearby car wash who’s always asking to use the phone before buying another DVD player only to return it three days later, or the self-proclaimed “audiophile” who swears he can tell the difference between the cheap and expensive speaker wire (and as a commissioned salesperson, thank God for that guy).

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Game of Thrones (Season 1)

by Grace Crawford

All images courtesy of HBO.

All images courtesy of HBO.

So apparently season 3 of Game of Thrones has started up again. Which is cool, I guess, except I only got partway through season 2 before I got slammed with school and had to stop, and I don’t remember anything that happened in A Storm of Swords except for the Red Wedding, and if you don’t know what that is I won’t spoil it for you (although seriously. The Red Wedding, you guys). I’m partway through A Dance with Dragons, though, which is shaping up to be a pretty solid book, so I figured I’d take a crack at the TV show that’s at least partly to blame for the deluge of medieval fantasy that’s flooded into the entertainment world.

I love fantasy; I always have. I began with Narnia, moved on to Hogwarts and Middle Earth, and am now quite happily ensconced in the Seven Kingdoms. Fantasy always has magic, which I love, and often has a medieval setting, which I also love. But what I don’t like is a world that’s meant to be medieval but just comes across as vaguely so. Continue reading

G.I. Joe: Retaliation

by Thom Yee

G.I. Joe - Retaliation Poster

G.I. Joe: Retaliation images courtesy of Paramount Pictures and MGM

Overall, Scrubs was a pretty good, possibly great show.

It was the kind of show that a lot of young adults needed in the ’00s because it felt real as it explored its young protagonists’ fanciful psychoses.

Even though it was uneven and occasionally a little too up its own ass, it had a lot of strong character arcs and emotionally raw moments.

To me and a lot of Scrubs fans, a truly standout performance was Brendan Fraser as Ben, one of the few people that Dr. Cox (the acerbic doctor of internal medicine at Sacred Heart Hospital) actually liked.

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