Before we all get to see 'Star Trek Into Darkness' in theaters, we had the good fortune to speak with our old chum Simon Pegg, following a riveting conversation with his co-star Karl Urban about all things Bones McCoy,
For Scotty fans, 'Into Darkness' is a big wet kiss, as our ol' Aberdeen pub crawler/inadvertent inventor of transwarp beaming is all over this movie, offering laughs, cheers and thrills. Take a look at our conversation to learn about why, one day, he barfed on set. (Also, there are itty bitty SPOILERS in here, but all pertaining to stuff that happens early enough. Just read the damn thing and don't be that guy.)
Our long, slow trek into darkness is almost over. We've seen and reviewed the 'Star Trek' sequel and soon you will, too. (Well, you'll see it – whether your review will be anything more than saying, “hey, that was fun!” as you go out for Whoppers afterwards is up to you.)
The Federated States of Bad Robot have made a global sweep of the world's press, starting in Sydney and ending in Los Angeles. We put a call into sick bay and had the good fortune to speak with Karl Urban, back on board the Enterprise as the lovable curmudgeon Dr. Leonard H. “Bones” McCoy. Urban's take on Starfleet's finest chief medical officer is a welcome bit of comic relief in 'Star Trek Into Darkness,' so much so that it took great self-restraint to keep from begging him to shout “dammit!' over the phone. We did, however, touch upon other topics.
With 'Star Trek Into Darkness,' Abrams' follow up to the 2009 'Star Trek' reboot (or continuation of the series, if you are Spock Prime) he has solidified his position as a master of propulsive, visceral filmmaking. Dude knows where to put the camera, when the music should swell, when the characters should zing each another or when they should project pathos to the cheap seats. The 'Star Wars' films are mostly gut and little brains and, unfortunately, that is what we have here. The movie still works as an exemplary thrill ride – I laughed, I cried, I cheered – but woe be to anyone who gets caught in a conversation afterwards trying to explain the overly complicated and, at times, silly plot. If you expect something a little sharper out of 'Star Trek' you may come away with some mixed emotions.
If you spend any time talking to an evolutionary psychologist, you may come away feeling depressed. We are beastly, horrible creatures whose brutal nature may still be a few steps behind our notions of morality. (One neuroscientist, Sam Harris, argues that we don't even possess free will – not because of any theological notions of predestination, but because we are not yet equipped to master the synaptic responses in our brain which build from environmental factors.) The “New Founding Fathers” in the sci-fi/horror/thriller/whatsit picture 'The Purge' seem to agree with all this, or at least use it as an excuse to implement their very unique (okay, far-fetched) plan to pacify the American public.
Well, you did it Baz Luhrmann. Even with an enormous budget, outrageous costumes, beautiful actors, native 3D and a camera that can fly around and do just about anything, you still made watching 'The Great Gatsby' just as boring as sitting through 8th period English.
The cast and crew of 'Star Trek Into Darkness' are currently on a whirlwind publicity tour. Starting in Sydney, then Moscow and Germany, now London. We had the good fortune to speak with Karl Urban (aka Leonard H. “Bones” McCoy) whose comic relief performance in this sequel is just as terrific as in the first.
He does, however, get to do a little scientific work in the picture, and some of it involves medical tests from some old fuzzy franchise friend – the Tribbles.
Sharp-eyed viewers saw a Tribble in the 2009 picture (it's on Scotty's desk during the Delta Vega sequence) but this time he's front and center. We asked Urban about working with a Tribble and he told us a surprising fact.
Since before the Neolithic revolution of 10,000 BC there have been stories. (I know this from reading in-depth about the Lascaux cave paintings and also from seeing 'The Croods.') While there was, is and always will be fiction, much of artistic expression has been used as a means to record what happened to us. 'Og Nearly Got Eaten by a Mastodon Today' – that would have been a big hit in the stone age.
Part of this process can be a search for an undeniable truth and part of it is self-discovery. That's at the heart of 'Stories We Tell,' a remarkable first-person documentary actor/director Sarah Polley made after she dug into some secrets about her own unorthodox upbringing.
My disdain of the 'Scary Movie' franchise came early. I distinctly recall seeing the 'Scary Movie 2' poster, which featured Kathleen Robertson wearing a t-shirt that says "I See Dead People." This isn't a joke. It's just a reference. It isn't clever, it isn't witty - it's just saying a thing from another movie. It's not funny.
Almost 10 years later, 'Scary Movie 5' still suffers from this debilitating problem. There is absolutely nothing funny about going 'Inception'-style into Christian Grey's S&M room and having Mike Tyson show up. Yet, if you are somehow able to ignore the lowest common denominator pop culture appearances (I hesitate to even call them jokes) there are a great number of truly amusing gags and examples of rapid fire dialogue zings. Put bluntly: when the film is freed from the shackles of its referencing mandate, there's some good, dopey humor in here. Much to my surprise, I laughed out loud a good half-dozen times.
When I went to Paris I ate croissants and drank red wine. When Brady Corbet's newly sprung post-grad Simon goes to Paris, he creeps through the city with a lecherous, malevolent camera eye that, in time, will stoke the coals of any sociopathic fires within. 'Simon Killer' - a divisive film lurking on the festival circuit - is dark, disorienting and disturbing. This is its goal, so it is also a success.
You can buy replicas of Richard Attenborough's amber-tipped cane or you can listen to ten minute loops of Jeff Goldblum's oddball laugh but there's something you haven't been able to do in twenty years: hear the roar of a T. rex fighting two Velociraptors from thunderous, surround sound of big cinema speakers. Something you've never been able to do is see it in 3D or in IMAX. Until now. And you don't want to miss it.
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