Archive for Star Trek

The Grocery Aisle of long forgotten breakfast cereals Part III

Posted in Batman, breakfast cereal, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, Star Trek with tags , , , , , on March 16, 2010 by Paxton

Last year I wrote a two part article talking about long defunct breakfast cereals. They were both a very big hit. Dark Roasted Blend and The National Review Online picked them up and it exploded onto a bunch of other blogs after that. If you missed the first two parts of this article:

Read Part I here.
Read Part II here.

A big thanks to my friends Jackie and Steve for actually suggesting this topic to begin with.  Now, let’s take another stroll down Grocery Aisle 7c and examine a bunch more extinct breakfast cereals.

Freakies Fruity Freakies Cocoa Freakies
Freakies cereal was created in 1971 by Ralston-Purina and lasted until about 1977. However, despite most of the general public not really remembering it, the sloppy man-love for this cereal among cereal box enthusiasts is insane. These boxes are traded heavily amongst collectors with the Cocoa Freakies box going for around $800. I honestly don’t remember it, but there are a lot of people who do and would shell out truckloads of dough for certain boxes.  Here’s a commercial for Freakies.

Quisp and Quake Quangaroos
Quisp and Quake were introduced back in 1965 by the Quaker Oats company.  They were usually marketed together as rivals in much the same way as Baron Von Redberry and Sir Grapefellow.  The characters and animation for the cereals and commercials were done by Jay Ward who also created Rocky & Bullwinkle.  The commercial even uses some of the same voice talent as Rocky & Bullwinkle.  Check out a Quisp commercial here (you see Quake at the very end).  In 1970, Quaker ran a contest promotion to see which cereal was more popular.  Quisp won and Quake quietly left the shelves. However Quake would resurface later in the even more queerly named Quake’s Orange Quangaroos.  Quaker was totally committed to the whole ‘Q’ thing. See a Quangaroos commercial here. Retro boxes of both Quisp and Quake have been released to certain markets in the past few years.

Read more »

The Movie Board: My favorite movies of 2009

Posted in Academy Awards, movies, Oscars, reviews, sequels, Star Trek with tags , , , , , , on January 12, 2010 by Paxton

Okay, everyone. We are finally here. We are at the point where I glance up at my 2009 Movie Board and try to figure out what were my favorite movies of 2009. For those scoring at home, here’s the Movie Board for this year:

Movie Board 2009

As you can see, I saw 53 movies that were released in 2009 (and therefore are eligible for the Oscars).  Some of those movies were in the theater (the majority of them, actually) and some were at home on Blu-Ray.  That’s 4.42 movies per month. Up from last year. Also, I was able to top 50 movies for the first time since 2007. So, I’m excited about that.  Last year my total was 49, so I was a bit irked I didn’t make it.  This year, I’m back, baby!

For those just joining us this year, or for those that like reliving the past, check out my favorite movie picks in my Movie Board articles for 2007 and 2008.  I myself like to look back every year before I write this article, just to get in the movie pickin’ mood.

This was a really good year for movies. I saw a metric TON of good flicks in 2009.  I really had a hard time getting this list down to my favorite movies of the year.  As usual, I’m just picking my favorite five.  My own personal “best” list.  You may agree, you may disagree.  Regardless, I’m right, so pipe down and prepare to be told what 5 movies rocked my world this year.

Okay, 2009 movies, let’s do this.

Star Trek 2009
Star Trek – Blew my ass away. I’d take a picture of my ass to prove it to you, but you wouldn’t see anything but a blank space, because it was BLOWN AWAY.  I saw this movie twice in theaters because I had my ass kicked so incredibly hard the first time, I had to go back to be sure it wasn’t an illusion.  And it wasn’t.  I laughed and cried (yes, I f’n cried) at all the exact same spots on both viewings.  Then, my dad gave me the movie for Xmas and I watched it again on Blu-Ray and was reduced to a blubbering, laughing mess for a THIRD TIME.  THIS MOVIE IS FANTASTIC.  I can’t place this movie high enough on the list to get across how much I love this movie.  JJ Abrams gets it.  Orci and Kurtzman get it.  The actors get it.  This movie was Star Trek, warts and all.  I know some people were bitching about the plot holes and time travel, but I invite those haters to SHUT THEIR CHEETOS HOLES.  If you have watched any of the original series episodes from the ’60s (which I’ve been doing) then this movie fits right in.  I put this movie up there with Wrath of Khan and Undiscovered Country as my favorite Star Trek movie.  I balled when George Kirk died.  I laughed and pumped my fist when Kirk beats the Kobayashi-Maru.  I marveled at the final battle with Nero.  I couldn’t have asked for a better Star Trek movie.  PERIOD.  Best.  Movie.  This.  Year.  Take that to the bank, haters.

District 9
District 9 – I read a lot of the press for this movie before it opened.  A small sci-fi film from South Africa produced by Peter Jackson and written/directed by a little known but talented guy named Neill Blomkamp.  I knew most of the movie is done in a mock documentary style about aliens that have come to Earth.  That’s about all I knew, but it looked like a really clever idea and I was excited to see it.  I had no idea what I was in for.  Fantastic.  This movie blends CGI, practical effects and live action in an unbelievably seamless way.  The aliens are all CGI, but they are REAL.  This is no Jar Jar Binks, my friends.  Also, even though it’s only used for the first 2/3 of the movie, the mockumentary structure really works.  This is just a wonderful sci-fi movie.  Some of the movie review guys on the Internets that I respect even put this in their best of the year.  Devin over at CHUD put it #4 in his top 15 of the year and both Massawyrm and Harry Knowles over at Aint It Cool News put it #1 on their lists.  I absolutely agree.  This movie deserves to be seen.  It’s awesome.  I can’t recommend it enough.  Hopefully we’ll see a nomination for Special Effects as well as Best Screenplay (fingers crossed).

Read more »

Star Trek Original Series Season 1 highlights Part II

Posted in movies, pop culture, Star Trek, TV shows, Uncategorized with tags , , , , , on November 11, 2009 by Paxton

Star Trek castThis is the long awaited Part II of my look back at highlights of the Season 1 of Star Trek the Original Series.  I posted Part I back in September.  However, thanks to AWESOME-tober-fest, I couldn’t get this one posted until now.

To refresh everyone’s memory, after the awesome JJ Abrams reboot of Star Trek back in May, I wanted to watch the original TV show episodes again. I’d seen a few episodes in reruns, but never really sat down to watch the episodes back to back.  I wanted to see if they are as good as I remember.  And since the first two seasons were recently released on Blu-Ray, I thought it was no time like the present (Season 3 will be released on Blu-Ray December 15).

Last time I looked at three of the best episodes from the first half of Season 1 of the Original Series (Where No Man Has Gone Before, The Enemy Within and The Corbomite Maneuver).  Here are three more episodes from the middle of that season.

ST The Menagerie
The Menagerie (Part I and II) — The first and only 2 part episode in the original series’ 3 year run. This episode makes extensive use of the unaired pilot, The Cage, to tell its story. I imagine Roddenberry walked into the writer’s room and announced, “Dudes, I went on a bender of coke and whores this weekend and totally forgot to write this week’s episode.  Any ideas?”  So the writer’s cobbled together this episode using a minimum of new footage and letting the old pilot pad out the run time.  This episode is okay, but it reminds me of the ’80s sitcom device of the “flashback episode”.  The events of the pilot, within the context of this episode, are said to have happened 13 years prior when Christopher Pike was the Enterprise captain and Spock the science officer.  In the new footage, Spock hijacks Kirk’s Enterprise to bring Capt Pike (now blonde and a paraplegic due to an accident) back to Talos IV, the planet visited in the pilot. Spock gets court martialed while the Enterprise makes the journey and clips from almost the entire episode of The Cage are screened during the court proceedings.  In the older footage, Pike gets trapped on the planet Talos IV and the aliens residing there put him in a type of zoo for observation.  The aliens use holograms to make Pike feel more comfortable by making him believe he’s living a different life, even going so far as to give him a hot chick to mate with.  Pike, not being Kirk, is outraged that the aliens would try to make him comfortable with a cool, imaginary life and then also have the temerity to give him hot women in which to have copious amounts of sex so he sets out to destroy the entire observatory/zoo.  Many, many years later, in the new footage, after having become a quadriplegic, Pike is totally fine with living a fantasy life with lots of hot chicks so works with Spock to break every Federation rule and bring him there, even risking Spock’s career for his own comfort.  After seeing this episode I have no desire to watch the full pilot.  I’ve probably seen 90% of the footage anyway.  And the actor who played Pike in the pilot, Jeffery Hunter, didn’t return for The Menagerie, hence Pike being an invalid, blonde mute (it’s like they didn’t even try to make him look the same) in the new footage.

Read more »

Star Trek 43rd Birthday: Watching Season 1 on DVD Part I

Posted in movies, pop culture, reviews, Star Trek, TV shows with tags , , , , , on September 11, 2009 by Paxton

Star Trek the Original SeriesOkay, today we are continuing our Star Trek 43rd Anniversary celebration by revisiting the original TV series episodes.  On Wednesday I did a movie retrospective of the first six Star Trek movies, but today I’m reviewing Season 1 of the TV series.  Growing up in the ’80s, I was a big fan of the movie version of Star Trek.  Treks II and VI were my favorite movies with the original cast.  I had seen some of the episodes of the original TV show in syndication, but I didn’t remember them.  I said before, that the only episode I’ve watched in its entirety more than once was Squire of Gothos because it contained the character of Trelane, the precursor to Star Trek:  The Next Generations’ Q character.

Looking at the Season 1 set being offered from Netflix, I noticed something odd.  The original unaired pilot, The Cage, is not offered on the first season set.  I was disappointed because I really wanted to see this episode.  However, after digging around on the internet I found out that The Cage was offered on the very last disc of Season 3 as a bonus.  So I had to get the last disc of season 3 mailed to me from Netflix to see the unaired pilot.  I just thought that was weird.

So, anyway, this is what I’m watching, the Blu-Ray set of Star Trek The Original Series, Season 1.

Star Trek OS Season 1

Going into this I was very worried that the original show was going to be a little dated and boring.  That I wasn’t going to enjoy it as much as the movies.  That’s one of the reasons I decided to re-watch the shows, to see the whole phenomenon how it originally aired.

Overview of Season 1 as a Whole

So, how does the series hold up?  Very well, actually.  Like I said, I was prepared to be a bit bored by the cheap special effects and low caliber story telling, but the series really surprised me.  Yes, there are episodes that plod along and bore you, but for the most part it is fascinating to watch the crew at work.  Predictably, Shatner is UNBELIEVABLE as James Kirk.  All the reasons I love him in every Star Trek movie is presented in this first season.  He is supremely bad ass, as macho as the offspring of a T-Rex and a Great White Shark and totally in charge at all times.  He seeks out new life, then when the new life starts acting like bitches, he throws photon torpedoes at it until the problem goes away.  Kirk doesn’t care.  And Spock.  OMFG, Nimoy is a treasure.  He is the king of the subtle insults.  Whenever some crew member is freaking out about the near death adventures Kirk keeps getting them into, Spock always comes at them completely deadpan with something similar to “emotions are illogical” or “emotions make you weak”.  Then he gives them that penetrating Vulcan stare with the raised eyebrow that informs the crew member that they have just been OWNED.  The crew of the Enterprise have got to think Spock is a douche.  I love it.

Read more »

Star Trek 43rd Birthday: Re-Watching the movies

Posted in movies, pop culture, reviews, Star Trek with tags , , , on September 9, 2009 by Paxton

Star Trek movie crew

Star Trek turned 43 this week. The first episode of the original series aired on Sept 8, 1966. To celebrate, I re-watched all the original cast’s Star Trek movies. Starting with Star Trek The Motion Picture and going through Star Trek VI:  The Undiscovered Country, I quickly review the movie legacy of the cast from the original TV show.

Let’s see if these movies are still as good in the harsh light of today.  Beware, though, as the movie pirate will tell you, “Proceed with caution, mates.  Thar be spoilers ahead!”

Star Trek The Motion Picture
Star Trek: The Motion Picture – I didn’t watch this until I was in high school.  What I remember from that screening was one word:  BORING.  Watching this again, I have a new word:  COMA-INDUCING.  The problem lies in the fact that this movie was originally developed as a new Star Trek TV series called Phase II which would’ve included Kirk, Spock, Bones and others in small roles as well as a bunch of new officers (a bald chick and that guy from 7th Heaven).  After the success of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Wars, Paramount trashed the new series and had the show re-developed as a motion picture.  Surprisingly, Phase II was written by sci-fi legend Alan Dean Foster who also wrote the Star Trek reboot novelization.  Despite the high pedigree of writer, what the movie delivers is an incomprehensible mess.  The storyline is hard to follow, some of the effects are terrible and the acting is less than stellar.    If you are looking for your first Star Trek movie viewing, I beg you, with all that is holy, DO NOT start here.  Your journey will end before it can begin.  If you must, return to it later and wonder WTF just happened.  After watching this again, I’m surprised Part II got made at all.  1.5/5

Star Trek II
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan – It’s almost cliche to say that Star Trek II is the best Star Trek movie, but things become cliche for a reason.  Next to Part VI, also written/directed by Nicholas Meyer, this is the best Trek movie.  This movie’s story is a sequel to a 1967 episode of the original series called Space Seed.  Ricardo Montalban’s Khan first appeared in that episode and the movie picks up years later when Kirk and his crew once again face the titular genetically enhanced Khan.  The opening of the movie is iconic and depicts the infamous Kobayshi-Maru officer’s test.  From there the action takes off and never lets up during the tight 116 minute runtime.  The superior pacing and the tete-a-tete between Kirk and Khan make this a wonderful sci-fi action movie.  This is what everyone thinks of when you say Star Trek and that’s why it’s a classic.  I’ll tell you this, if you don’t shed a tear during Spock’s death scene when he tells Kirk that he will forever be his friend, then you have no soul, my friend.  I’m misting up right now just thinking about it. 4/5

Read more »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 432 other followers