Thursday, October 26, 2006

Trek Remastered -- "Arena"

This isn't turning into "The Trek Blog", honest. I'll have other things to comment on soon, I'm sure.

"Arena" is the Trek episode that aired late last Sunday night. That night's ep has typically been rerun on the following Saturday, so you can check it out later if you miss it. I had forgotten some of the events that happened when the crew was attacked at the outpost, including the mortar they use against the Gorn. Check out screenshots and video here.

This weekend's show is the Halloween episode, "Catspaw". Sneak peek here and video preview here. It's another favorite of mine, so I can't wait!

Friday, October 20, 2006

Incident at Blood Pass (1970)

Last night I went over to DVO's house to watch Incident at Blood Pass (1970). We hadn't seen it before, and we were very happy to finally have the chance to view it. It's a excellent samurai film with plenty of twists and double-crosses, starring the great actors Toshiro Mifune and Shintaro Katsu. There's a not-so-subtle insinuation that Mifune's nameless samurai in this movie is the same character from Yojimbo and Sanjuro. The other product of Mifune and Katsu's 1970 collaboration is Zatoichi meets Yojimbo.

I love Katsu's Zatoichi movies, but Toshiro Mifune is The Man.

Monday, October 16, 2006

Trek Remastered -- "City on the Edge of Forever"

Last weekend's ep was "City on the Edge of Forever", one of the best of The Original Series. Updates on this episode included a beautiful panning flyby shot of the Enterprise in orbit. Maybe if the studio wasn't under such a time crunch, they could have included more establishing shots of the planet. It might not even be something they were looking at, but I hoped that they would have added in some of the scenes that were in Harlan Ellison's original script showing the epic grandeur of the ruins on the planet. Maybe I'll talk about that in another post.

This past weekend's episode should have been "I, Mudd", but there wasn't an ep on Saturday night (baseball playoffs), and in the Sunday night/Monday morning slot was a rerun of "City...". That's disappointing. We'll see what's on the lineup for next weekend, as the newspaper TV guide says that there should be a Saturday ep then. According to the schedule, it should be "Arena", the one with the Gorn and Kirk's makeshift gunpowder cannon.

Friday, October 06, 2006

Christie's Auction of Trek Memorabilia

You may have heard on the news that there is currently an huge auction of Trek props and costumes from CBS/Paramount's storage, including items across its 40 year lifespan. Unfortunately, the only thing I could afford is the auction catalog (Woo-hoo! It's discounted down to 60 bucks now!).

The news coverage of the event has triggered one of my pet peeves. Every reporter who ends a Star Trek news segment by "beaming up" owes me a dollar.

More Trek Remastered -- "The Naked Time"

Last weekend's episode were a repeat of "The Devil in the Dark" on Saturday night and "The Naked Time" on Sunday night/Monday morning. The only real updates to "The Naked Time" were a new establishing shot of the planet and new viewscreen effects.

I'm not sure what the schedule will be this weekend. The Major League Baseball playoffs begin this week and one of the games is on Fox during the Saturday night Star Trek slot. This weekend's scheduled episode is the great Harlan Ellison-penned "The City on the Edge of Forever". I assume (and you know what that means) that "City..." will air early Monday morning.

'Til then, go easy on the cordrazine.

Thursday, October 05, 2006