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Post by jeffgeorge on May 15, 2018 20:14:49 GMT -9
As I've probably mentioned elsewhere in the forums, my capacity to watch Star Trek TOS episodes, no matter how good, is severely handicapped by my awareness of what a total tool William Shatner is in real life. That awareness kept me from enjoying Boston Legal, too, for that matter. But if you doubted me in my assessment of Shatner's character, here's a video of Wil Wheaton--the person whose life and career I'd most want to have if I could have anyone's--telling the story of his first introduction to the original captain of the Enterprise. Spoiler alert: I won't tell you who the real hero of the story turns out to be, but his name rhymes with Zene Zoddenberry. By the way, get yourself a fresh cup of coffee and put your feet up when you watch this vid. It's 24 minutes long, but every second of it is delicious.
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shep
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Post by shep on May 16, 2018 0:09:06 GMT -9
LOL! Already knew that video... It's always fun to watch. About watching TOS, you just have to divide the characters from their actors. This way, it's no trouble to watch the old series, the new movies, the animated episodes, ST Continues, or whatever, since we want to watch the adventures of the characters not the exploits of actors...
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Post by jeffgeorge on May 16, 2018 13:00:03 GMT -9
I realize that this is a personal problem--my difficulty in not holding characters responsible for their actor's behavior outside their show. For a decade or so, I worked as a theatrical photographer in Manhattan, and although most of the people I worked with you've never heard of, I did occasionally come in contact with B-list celebrities. Most of these folks are perfectly pleasant; a few are a bit full of themselves. I can deal with that. But I just can't abide very successful people who are unnecessarily rude to people who aren't as far along in their careers, or who are unappreciative of the fans who buy the tickets that pay for their ten-million dollar homes. Although I've never met Shatner, every story I've ever heard about him falls into one or both of those categories.
This is part of why I was so excited about the Kelvin timeline reboot--I'd get to enjoy Kirk, Spock and McCoy without having to put up with Shatner. Personally, I enjoyed the hell out of all three JJ Trek movies, and I'm sad that the studio bungled the management of the franchise so much that there will never be another one.
In any case, I'll never be convinced that they couldn't have cast someone else as Kirk and had the series be just as successful, and possibly moreso. Square-jawed leading men are usually a dime a dozen in Hollywood, and always have been. Frankly, I think replacing DeForest Kelley would have changed the series more than switching out Kirks, and casting anyone besides Nimoy as Spock would probably have been fatal.
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Post by okumarts on May 16, 2018 17:01:30 GMT -9
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Post by jeffgeorge on May 16, 2018 18:24:24 GMT -9
That lines up with stuff I've read, though I hadn't heard that things had gotten even worse in the past couple of weeks, as apparently they have. But what I was referring to was the way that Paramount bungled the timing of Into Darkness and Beyond in a series of bonehead decisions that had little to do with the CBS v. Viacom war. It's been a while since I read all this, but as I recall, Paramount waited two or three years after the release of the reasonably successful Abrams Trek reboot in 2009 to get going on a sequel. By the time, Into Darkness, came out in 2013, fans had pretty much forgotten about the reboot. Loss of franchise momentum, along with the generally lukewarm reaction to Into Darkness, allowed Star Trek Beyond (2016) to fade into the background as fans became preoccupied with the continuation of the Star Wars franchise in The Force Awakens (2015) and Rogue One (2016). Despite the fact that Star Trek Beyond was actually a pretty decent movie, it apparently didn't sell enough tickets to justify the cost of doing a fourth film. For the franchise to gather and build momentum, Paramount needed to be ready to move on Into Darkness las soon as the 2009 movie hit theaters. If the Kelvin movies had come out in 2009, 2011, and 2013, instead of 2009, 2013, and 2016, I think they'd have been able to make at least a couple more before the franchise ran out of steam. But between Star Wars and the many, many Avengers-related movies, there's just not much room left in the science fantasy action adventure market for yet one more continuing series of films. Which suggests that no matter what you may think of The Last Jedi, Disney is obviously much better at managing multi-movie franchises than Paramount is. It also didn't help that even when the Kelvin movies were fresh, TOS merchandise continued to outsell Kelvin merchandise by orders of magnitude. It's too bad that if toy sales are going to be used to drive movie production, the nostalgia of fifty year old nerds overwhelms the excitement of ten year olds. If there are never any new Trek movies, we have only ourselves to blame, my fellow middle-aged nerds.
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shep
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Post by shep on May 16, 2018 23:00:44 GMT -9
I've met Shatner once, when he was the honoured guest on the maiden voyage of a ship on the Rhine, called RMF Enterprise. It looked a bit like they had mounted the Enterprise-B onto some kind of pontoon, and was at its time the fastest ship on the river (with 54 km/h max upstream). During his panel, Shatner declined to talk about Trek and spoke about horses instead... for almost 3 hours, or so it felt. It actually were only 45 minutes with the rest of the time nothing to be seen of him. He was nice, when meeting him, though. However, that could also have been due to my 25 people fully attired and armed Klingon entourage... Funnily enough, the ship was not entirely ready during its maiden voyage. On the main deck, some monitor screens explaining the landscape along the river where missing, and there was no captain's chair on the bridge. When asking the captain when the ship's interior would be finished, he answered: "Next Tuesday." Me and my Klingons broke out in laughter, the captain was completely puzzled, and we had to explain him why we laughed. Oh, and about the new movies... I read just yesterday that they are producing 2 new movies right now: one directed by Tarantino which is supposed to play in Prime with possibly an entirely new crew, and seems to be destined to be rated R. The other movie will be part 4 of the Kelvin-timeline with Thor reprising his "true life" as Kirk's father, and the whole show rumored to be a time travel thingy...
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Post by squirmydad on May 17, 2018 9:04:49 GMT -9
"If You Meet The Shatner On The Road, Kill Him." -Zen Master Linji
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shep
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Post by shep on May 17, 2018 11:34:07 GMT -9
"If You Meet The Shatner On The Road, Kill Him." -Zen Master Linji That advice comes a little late, since that maiden voyage was in 1997... Also, shouldn't it in my case be "If You Meet The Shatner On The Boat..."?
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Post by Vermin King on May 17, 2018 11:56:06 GMT -9
I believe the long version, if my Google Translate is correct, is 'If you meet the Shatner on the Road of Life, kill him'
I may be in error, but we can blame it on Google
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Post by jeffgeorge on May 17, 2018 13:47:45 GMT -9
During his panel, Shatner declined to talk about Trek and spoke about horses instead... for almost 3 hours, or so it felt. It actually were only 45 minutes with the rest of the time nothing to be seen of him. That's about par for the course, from what I observe. He doesn't realize that if we wanted to hear about horses, we'd have gone to someone else's panel. He is a seriously ungrateful human being, which is his prerogative. But when he accepts take people's money at a Star Trek event, he incurs a moral obligation to talk about Star Trek. If I go to a restaurant that serves Italian food, and I order lasagna, but the waiter insists on showing me his hand-tied fishing lures and never delivers lasagna, that waiter has breached our contract. That's what Shatner is--an Italian restaurant waiter who only serves fishing lures. Well, that's interesting news! I'm...skeptical...about a Tarantino Trek film, because while I like both Tarentino and Trek, I don't see them working well together. (I like mustard and strawberry ice cream, but I don't put my mustard directly on my strawberry ice cream!) As for a new Kelvin film, I'd given up on that based on stuff I'd read about a year ago, but yeah, there's a May 8, 2018, post at DenOfGeek that makes Kelvin Trek 4 sound like a done deal. I'm mildly trepidatious about a time-travel plot, given the spotty history of time-bending stories in Trek and SF in general, but I'm very happy to hear that the series lives on, with the original cast on board. Thanks for discovering this for us, shep!
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shep
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Post by shep on May 17, 2018 21:34:18 GMT -9
Nah, I just stumbled over this video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBqZLN2HFQkand went on from there. I could see Tarantino doing some kind of wartime Trek, but in a way that sends Discover right into playschool. And since tey insist, that Tarantino wants Prime Trek, I'd guess it might be centered around the Klingons, and THAT would be a Star Trek I've been longing for for a long time: Star Trek with a different focus than Starfleet... As for time travelling in the Kelvin-verse... They are bound to leave their timeline and mess around with Prime once more, thereby altering Prime AND their own timeline when interacting with Kirk-sr. As long as their story is good, no trouble with that, but Prime has become more and more of a mess up to a point where you have to view every classical era (ENT, TOS/TAS, TMP/TWOK, and TNG/DS9/VOY) as its own bubble in a truly chaotic universe...
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Post by jeffgeorge on May 18, 2018 12:23:32 GMT -9
I'm pretty sure I read someplace that Paramount's movies are contractually prohibited from doing anything that would affect the Prime timeline. Not sure where I got that, but I recall that it seemed authoritative. If that's true, I suppose they could bring George Kirk forward in time, into the "current" Kelvin period, but they'd be blocked from sending James T. & Co. back to any time before the appearance of Nero and the Romulan planet-wreckers, which I believe would be the event that splits the timelines. Of course I could be full shi-- er, stuff, about all this.
But yeah, as long as the movie is at least mediocre, I'll buy a ticket and find a way to enjoy it, whether it's Kelvin or Prime.
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shep
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Post by shep on May 19, 2018 8:27:03 GMT -9
They basically are, but they evidently seem to not care, as you can see in Beyond. The Franklin gone missing and their use of the alien tech is set before the Narada-incident, hence in Prime...
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Post by jeffgeorge on May 19, 2018 12:08:37 GMT -9
They basically are, but they evidently seem to not care, as you can see in Beyond. The Franklin gone missing and their use of the alien tech is set before the Narada-incident, hence in Prime... Wow, you are much more up on your Trek lore than I ever will be. I didn't even know there was a Franklin established in the Prime timeline, let alone that its history had been changed by the events in Beyond. Oh well...as long as they keep making movies, I'll keep buying tickets (again, at least until they start to totally stink). One question, shep...you live in Germany, if I recall correctly. Do folks there watch Trek dubbed into German, or do most people know enough English to watch the American version? Surely you aren't watching the American version with subtitles...? And if the actors are dubbed anyway, how much does it matter who the plays the roles to fans watching the foreign language version? It never occurred to me to even wonder about that until just now.
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shep
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Post by shep on May 19, 2018 15:55:17 GMT -9
Wow, you are much more up on your Trek lore than I ever will be. I didn't even know there was a Franklin established in the Prime timeline, let alone that its history had been changed by the events in Beyond. Oh well...as long as they keep making movies, I'll keep buying tickets (again, at least until they start to totally stink). No no, you got me wrong there... They established the Franklin in »Beyond«, but all events with the Franklin and her crew take place (more or less) shortly after the MACOs were disbanded when the Federation was founded, which would have been some time around 2165. The Narrada-Incident happened some time during the late 2230's. So, all events about the Franklin plunging into a wormhole and getting marooned on that far off planet happened in the Prime universe... German cinema and TV is fully dubbed. We are the world leaders of dubbing, and we are doing it so perfectly, that the text is almost always in sync to the lip movements, even in exotic asian languages. I've heard from Americans that when watching US-series on German TV they at first didn't realize the language to not be English. However, there actually is a certain trouble with TOS: The series was originally dubbed and aired in the 1970's. Some scenes got cut during that process, and some lines dubbed in a rather dubious or overly funny way. When they digitally remastered the show for DVD-release about 10 years ago, some of the original voice actors had passed away in the meantime. So, they searched for voice actors with very alike voices to correct the wrong text and dub the missing scenes. And instead of dubbing the entire show over – which would have been too expensive – they only dubbed these scenes with the new voices. This way you get a voice mix in many of the episodes, but once you got used to that, you don't hear it anymore...
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Post by jeffgeorge on May 19, 2018 18:25:45 GMT -9
No no, you got me wrong there... They established the Franklin in »Beyond«, but all events with the Franklin and her crew take place (more or less) shortly after the MACOs were disbanded when the Federation was founded, which would have been some time around 2165. The Narrada-Incident happened some time during the late 2230's. So, all events about the Franklin plunging into a wormhole and getting marooned on that far off planet happened in the Prime universe... OK, I have no problem with that, then. If they come up with totally new stuff from the pre-Narada time before Kelvin veered off from Prime, so long as it doesn't directly conflict with known Prime history, I can just assume that it's something that just hadn't been covered in the various series to date. I mean, the Federation is huge, and no matter how much material there is, there's lots more which just hasn't come up so far. Just so long as they don't posit an alternative fate in the pre-Narada time period for a ship who's history is already established in known Prime events. Considering how early the Narada incident takes place, they really only have to worry about messing with the ST: Enterprise-era Prime history. Thanks for sharing about German dubbing practices. Foreign language films rarely make much of a splash in the US, apart from Anime/Manga, or whatever you call Japanese cartoons, where re-voicing the speech is much less of an issue than with live-action.
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shep
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Post by shep on May 19, 2018 20:14:09 GMT -9
ENT ends with the founding of the Federation in 2161, so basically everything past that up to the Narrada is free to shoot at. Interestingly, while there are novels covering the rise of the Federation from the 2160's on, no one ever dabbled in the time period between 2200 and 2245 (maiden voyage of Enterprise NCC-1701)... As for dubbing, we need to dub everything because there is not that much produced in Germany. We have some movies per year, quite good crime shows for TV, really good documentations, and some other good shows, while the bulk is made up of trash TV like daily soaps, scripted reality soaps, quiz shows, cooking shows, and some general entertainment – things you can't really watch and stay sane... However, the output is not nearly as huge as Hollywood's, so it is mostly US TV-shows and movies for us. Nowadays, most people know enough English to be able to watch without dubbing, but up until about 10 to 15 years ago, the majority in Germany was not really accustomed to English, and even today, there is quite a percentage of older people or less well educated ones who don't know English at all... Hence the dubbing.
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Post by Parduz on Jul 20, 2018 4:33:37 GMT -9
Just stumbled in this thread and this post in particular: German cinema and TV is fully dubbed. We are the world leaders of dubbing, and we are doing it so perfectly, that the text is almost always in sync to the lip movements, even in exotic asian languages. I've heard from Americans that when watching US-series on German TV they at first didn't realize the language to not be English. As any good neighbour knows, we could start a good (friendly) fight about who's the leaders of dubbing Seriously, that is the exact same scene we have in italy. We had dubbers (is this even a word?) so great and famous that are hired as "Vip" testimonials for commercial spots, and we also had some nice "problems" when two hollywood actors, which are usually dubbed by the same italian one, goes on the same movie (the most prominent was that movie with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro). Some actors wants to know their italian voices, and in some cases they have a very high respect and admiration for them. As for dubbing, we need to dub everything because there is not that much produced in Germany. We have some movies per year, quite good crime shows for TV, really good documentations, and some other good shows, while the bulk is made up of trash TV like daily soaps, scripted reality soaps, quiz shows, cooking shows, and some general entertainment – things you can't really watch and stay sane... However, the output is not nearly as huge as Hollywood's, so it is mostly US TV-shows and movies for us. Nowadays, most people know enough English to be able to watch without dubbing, but up until about 10 to 15 years ago, the majority in Germany was not really accustomed to English, and even today, there is quite a percentage of older people or less well educated ones who don't know English at all... Hence the dubbing. Same here, again. Going to watch movie or TV shows in english is becoming common between the youngers today, but there's still millions of ppl that find this hard, if not impossible.
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