I really, really don't know what to make of this news about David Cronenberg being directly involved (including writing and directing) the remake of the remake of The Fly. Until more concrete details emerge, I'm not even sure that this is true. It could just be one of those nutty internet rumors that catches on like a wildfire.
For anyone who doesn't know the history of The Fly, the obviously strange part is that David Cronenberg directed the 1986 remake of the film. Recently, he's been involved in overseeing the operatic version with Howard Shore. Will the movie be based on that? Is it really another remake or is Cronenberg looking to explore something different with familiar territory. Instead of disease, could this new iteration be a meditation on body modification?
And, does this mean Viggo could be the next Brundlefly?
Some of these ideas are fascinating, even though I can't reconcile this with the direction Cronenberg's been pushing. His body fascination has become less fantastic in the last ten years (certainly since eXistenZ) so this would be a curious return to form and literally a return to his older work. Weird.
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warning: Trek-related dorkness ahead. Skip to the bottom if you want to retain your "cool" points.
Going back and looking at the four Star Trek: The Next Generation movies, I realized that unlike the Original Series movies, I don't think I've really watched most of them all the way through since the first time. I'm positive I didn't watch Insurrection again, because I really didn't like it when I saw it on the big screen. It's an elongated episode of the show.
Nemesis was something I saw on tv years ago, really hated, and would occasionally stop for when it was on tv (again), mostly to shake my head in disbelief. Take your pick, but between the dune buggy sequence and B4, I can't take that movie seriously.
That leaves us with Generations and First Contact, both of which I enjoy. I did sit down a year or two ago and watch Generations for the first time in ten years or so, and found it to be better than I remembered it being. The Kirk stuff is still silly, including the horseback riding sequence, and Data's emotion chip is a little grating on the scientific outpost, but overall it's not bad for an "odd number" Trek movie. I remember being impressed that they pulled some loose threads from the series (particularly the Klingon political power struggle) and integrated them into the story.
First Contact... I'm still not sure I've seen it all the way through since watching it (presumably) on the big screen. The movie is on TV regularly, so bits and pieces of it are like an old glove (the fight with the Borg on the Enterprise's hull, for example), but I'm not convinced that I've seen it more than once. I remember liking it, and I could tell you bits and pieces if the story, but that's about it.
It feels a little silly to even be going back over them, since I'm probably never going to revisit Insurrection and I doubt that the allure of seeing Nemesis in its proper aspect ratio is really going to be reason to dive back into that underwhelming mess. As it stands, the Next Generation movies are at best one and a half out of four in the good to suck ratio. I can't give Generations a full-on pass. It's like Star Trek III: The Search for Spock: better than you might remember it being but not great.
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The boxed set also has what could be the worst "Extras" disc of either series. The Original Series movies had a "Captain's Summit", where Whoopi Goldberg sat down with William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Patrick Stewart, and Johnathan Frakes for and hour or so. It's full of half finished stories, jokes, and is very loose in terms of structure.
The Next Generation box has a disc with a handful of short featurettes, most of which I'll never watch again. There's a twelve minute walk through of the different versions of the Enterprise with one conceptual artist talking about them as you watch CGI versions of each ship and periodically footage from its corresponding movie.
There are three (count 'em) three pieces about the Vegas Hilton's Star Trek Experience, which ended last year. If you ever wanted to meet the actors and actresses who played characters you didn't know existed with tourist-attraction level makeup and then follow them on their last day of work ever, you're in luck. Not only do they get the longest featurette (30 minutes) on the entire disc, but both Experience attractions, Borg Invasion 4-D and Klingon Encounter, are shown in videotaped walkthrough, so you know what you missed by not going.
The best piece is a really brief overview of Trek villains from all the movies, despite the fact that the only talking heads are Nicholas Meyer (director of Wrath of Khan and Undiscovered Country) and the writers of the new Star Trek movie. There's an even shorter piece called "I Love the Star Trek Movies" that has maybe six people (all of whom worked on the shows or movies) giving really broad overviews. Finally, if you want to call it an "extra", there's a little map of the Trek galaxy where you can click on corresponding planets for a one minute clip about the plot of each film. To say it's disappointing is a massive understatement.
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Finally, the TNG box brings along another one of my favorite dvd misnomers: the technically true but mostly misleading "Over _ Hours of Extras!" promise.
Lately, the number is usually 5, leading you to believe that a dvd that can only hold 4 hours (at maximum) of presentable material is somehow magically pushing even further into original content created for home entertainment.
The trick here is that every single one of these advertisements is counting the length of the movie TWICE when there's a commentary track. Even though you're watching the movie again, it's new because someone is talking over the soundtrack. Personally, I think that's a little misleading. Yes, it is a supplement, but counting the full length of the movie as another extra is kind of cheating.
By that rationale, we could take The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King extended edition (which clocks in a roughly four and a half hours), and take the aggregate time of the four commentary tracks (roughly eighteen hours) plus the two appendices (about six to six and a half hours) and say that one movie has "Over 24 Hours of Bonus Material!" Technically, that's true. What I'm not telling you is that most of that Bonus Material involves you watching the movie again four times.
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