Popped in to the Estrogen Mall last night on my wa…
Popped in to the Estrogen Mall last night on my way home from work to see if any interesting movies were out, and to my surprise, Star Trek: Nemesis was playing. In fact, a showing was starting right at that moment, so I bought a ticket and rushed upstairs to find myself the only patron in the largest theater in the complex. The previews had been playing to an empty room, and I had my pick of any seat in the house. So I sat down and watched, experiencing a little thrill of pleasure when the familiar theme music rolled out with the opening credits. It’s been a long time.
By the end of the flick I was generally pleased. Star Trek, as Dean says, is like sex. Any Star Trek is good, or at least better than no Star Trek. But this one was pretty good, I thought. Lots of nice battle scenes, nifty special effects, a relatively interesting story with a minimum of Troi (only one scene, which provided a nice bathroom break opportunity). Almost every scene felt eerily familiar, not rehashed, but definitely familiar. The villain’s motives were spotty at best, though. He could have been a lot stronger, but the genetics/environment theme was interesting. I did not particularly appreciate being made to think I’d get to see Worf nekkid at the wedding at the end and then not. A potential DVD extra, perhaps? One can hope.
All in all, though, I liked it. A good, solid Star Trek film, not the best in the series, certainly no Wrath of Khan or First Contact, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as Final Frontier or Insurrection, so I was happy. On my way out I ran into Mindcrime, who had tickets for the very next showing for himself and H.G. Janice. I was surprised to see them, as I knew they’d both seen it already. I might want to see it again as well, but I didn’t want to see it again at that particular moment. Knowing Taiwanese theaters, though, it will probably close within a week.
Yesterday afternoon I heard a wailing sound coming from the square downstairs. I didn’t pay too much attention to it as wailing sounds aren’t that uncommon when you have a public area where children and teenagers get together. But the wailing continued on such a hysterical note I finally went over to the window to see what was going on. Turns out that the noise was coming from a young Taiwanese woman who was rolling on the ground having an extremely bad fit. We’re talking Sigourney-Weaver-floatin’-in-the-air shit. Next to her stood a man who seemed resigned to this development; indeed, I think he’d seen it many times before. Periodically the girl would run over to a nearby trash can and start to dig through it, whereupon the man would rush in and pull her away. Cue more wailing and thrashing about, followed by another rush to the trash. Maybe he tore up her Publisher’s Clearing House entry or something.
