THE PORTAL

As is normal for Fridays the day at work passed nice and quickly, unusual seeing as it was a Friday before going off for a week. By not optimistically mentioning or tweeting anything about wanting to finish nice and early I was able to finish nice if not exactly early after only finding one new thing in the early afternoon which could have done with being completed by the end of the day. I think the main difference between this and all other recent leaving-for-holiday preparations is the absence of any big projecty-stuff having to be passed on to anyone else and the current absence of anything requiring an instruction to be left for its completion on my absence. The only real thing I know I'll be missing whilst off is some training for an extension to our eavesdropping system but multiple reschedules have led it to now be placed on the very day for which the week off was intended to buffer. Not to be helped.

Despite being in a relaxing-mood when I got home I did some more painting though the second pot of white was significantly less pure dead brilliant than the previous pot and looked relatively greyish upon application though it can always be upgraded later. Second coats are generally much easier as there's no risk of any plaster showing through and the entire ceiling got a second coat in a couple of hours with none of the spillages and splatters the first diluted coat seemed to require. It didn't exactly leave the entire evening free to do fun things but the multiple screens of the Omnicentre meant that there were still a couple of viewings of Star Trek available even after I'd cleaned up the painting-equipment and had something to eat. Even at the Omni a later showing would hopefully mean less child-shouting-presence and therefore a more pleasant viewing-experience and there was only one set of morons interfering with the peaceful enjoyment of the film by the bloke-half of the couple feeling the need to explain everything to his companion despite frequent cross-aisle glowers and hissed entreaties to shut the fuck up.

Filmwise, film is definitely worth catching and I intend to attempt to at least try and catch it at Glasgow's IMAX if the forthcoming parent-impeded week-off permits but will otherwise settle for a standard second viewing. First of all, I'm not a particular fan of the Trek in the way that I am of the Wars (a couple of weekends ago I Spotified the soundtrack to episodes IV and V whilst doing some flat-work and could pretty much match what I was hearing to visual memory of the progression of the films) and can only remember fragments from occasional viewings of repeats of the original series, haven't seen all of the original films, did mostly watch most of TNG when it was on the telly but was only vaguely aware of DS9 and Enterprise and haven't seen any of the newer films since the baton-passing Generations at the Clerk Street Odeon when it was on cinematic release. I was, for instance, unaware of what Chekov and Sulu actually did as crew members. This film isn't as Star Trekky as the previous films and can be safely watched without feeling slightly suspicious. It's a much more Star Warsy film than Star Trekky, though it visually references a rather large amount of other space films including (particularly in a quick flurry of homaged shots near the end) Independence Day, Starship Troopers, Aliens, Empire, Phantom Menace, RotS and many more I didn't get the time to place whilst also being much more visually comic-book-adaptationish than one would expect a non-comic-book-adaptation to be. Whereas the original series had absolutely bugger all by way of effects it seemed to have to rely more on stories than would otherwise be necessary but as a space-based film it's nice that they can now have proper ILM effects to portray the vessels and explosions. Care seems to have been taken with the rendering of the Enterprise to give it a thoroughly photo-realistic yet still slightly could-be-a-wee-plastic-model shininess to it, especially when first glimpsed. A few of the environments look slightly cheap but the slight overall tongue-in-cheek feeling to everything makes it all acceptable. There's still no Millennium Falcon looping-round-cloud but there's less of the tedious weightiness of the previous ship-piloted-via-keyboard nonsense of Star Treks past. There weren't any new forms of radiation never previously encountered which at least indicates that none of the scriptwriters of TNG were involved anywhere. As for the people, new-Kirk looks a bit odd with his make-up slathered face and over-blue eyes but handles the Shatnerising quite well. Quinto obviously has a problem in that he's been Sylar for the past few years but is reasonably similar-looking to Nimoy (they even have the same nose) and avoids any of the pantomime-acting which infested series two of Heroes. One problem is that it's impossible not to look closely at the shaved portions of his eyebrows during close-ups. Nimoy is a little bt too creaky (and should be able to afford better teeth) but doesn't come off as badly as he could have done. Urban looks accurate but adds just a bit too much ham in places though he has a dignity (possibly age-related) some of the youngsters lack. Cho and Yelchin only get a couple of scenes each but perform quite capably though I've no idea how they relate to their previous incarnations. Saldana is a little bit watery (again, not much idea of comparison to original) and Pegg just about carries off the accent (doing far better than Doohan ever did) but seems to stray most from the original character but stands quite effectively out for so doing. The Captain Pike character comes over a bit Sam Neill in Jurassic Park but works, Banana's angry Romulan isn't too bad and Spock's dad looks quite like I remember him looking when he cropped up at some point in one of the serials. Winona Ryder's face-aging make-up is far too distracting as it looks like it's about to peel off. Generally very good, though; worth seeing at least once, ideally in a quiet and popcorn-free auditorium.