Unfortunately, I did not get to see STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE until it premiered on ABC-TV in 1983 with all of the extended footage. I had already experienced the action-filled speed of STAR TREK II on the screen, so by comparison, THE MOTION PICTURE seemed incredibly dull.
Over the years, while I still find the story very dull, the movie has grown on me for its visual effects and it’s more-than-obvious homage to the effects of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. I also love Jerry Goldsmith’s soundtrack. These reasons have been enough for me to have the film in my collection. I watched it just last week to comemorate the 30th anniversary.
And I also thought the 2009 STAR TREK sucked, sucked, sucked!
I agree with you, AIAlvarez – without a doubt, the WORST decade in the history of movie making!!! I think Hollywood sunk to its lowest level with a very obvious statement that they have completely run out of even semi-original and semi-intelligent scripts and stories.
The real tragic part of it all is that Hollywood just might stop and take notice of things if people would simply refuse to stop wasting their hard-earned time and money on sequels, threequels, remakes, franchise movies and CGI-based movies that offer nothing even resembling a semi-intelligent story.
Rise up, people! Stope allowing yourself to be insulted and taken in by the demons and monsters who control the movie industry!
Throughout the past decade, I’d have to say that my favorite super hero films were X-MEN (2000), SPIDER-MAN (2002), HULK (2003) and THE DARK KNIGHT (2008). Clearly, in 3 out of 4 cases, I went for and enjoyed the dark and the grim nature of all these characters. While I certainly am not an expert or a historian of the superhero, perhaps the idea is that being a superhero and fighting evil is SUPPOSED to be a grim, gritty and humorless job.
I avoided seeing THE DARK KNIGHT for weeks after its release because I decided that I was fed up with sequels of all kinds. Finally, though, I could not ignore the positive hype any longer and went to see it one afternoon at the Hampton Arts Theater in Westhampton Beach, Long Island and, admitedly, fell in love with it. However, I think Batman (as well as all superhero films) is finished with me. I’ve seen enough tales on the screen and I would prefer to end it on the positive note of THE DARK KNIGHT for myself.
You know, half the time, the popcorn is not even that fresh – it has either been sitting around all day and gets cold, it’s come out of one of those humungous bags I see sitting on the floor and isn’t freshly-popped, or the butter has been sitting around so long that it tastes rancid! This might be fine if you were paying a lot less for it, but the disgustingly high price you have to pay, your popcorn could, at the very least, be fresh, hot, with fresh butter and salt, and hey, here’s a great idea that might put an enthusiastic spin on the whole experience – free popcorn refills!
I’ve been sneaking in snacks and drinks into the movie theater for damn near 20 years now. It’s incredibly easy, especially during the colder months when you’re wearing a coat with deep pockets. I do it without hesitation, guilt or shame. Concession food prices are nothing short of monetary rape!
Theater owners would have to have their employees frisk their patrons and check their bags if they ultimately wanted to stop outside food from getting into their theaters. Yeah, like patrons are ever going to allow THAT to happen!
LIM, I suppose moviegoing today is a lot like WHITE CASTLE hamburgers – most people complain that it’s a horrible experience, and yet the establishment manages to stay in business.
I miss the days before I got married when I used to cheat the movie multiplex business by devoting an entire Saturday or Sunday and seeing three or four movies for the price of one at any given multiplex establishment. Security of any kind was such a joke!
No disrespect, longislandmovies, but you seem to stand virtually alone in your satisfaction with the movies and movie theaters are today. So many, many, many pissed off and disatisfied moviegoers can’t be wrong!
What is really on the screen anymore that is worth dragging your ass out of the house, into the multiplex, and dropping too much of your hard-earned money??? Sequels, threequels, remakes and computer-digital destruction of our planet???
I’d rather stay home and watch a Bogart or Cagney classic on DVD, and if it means the demise of the movie theater, then so be it!
Jay, one of the first steps to saving the movie theater experience is for all theaters to enforce a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to the use of cell phone, blackberrys, or any other kind of distractive or disruptive device, as well as the traditional talking and other forms of noise-making. If you want to talk on the phone or jerk off with your electronic playmate, then stay home where you belong!!!
One cannot enjoy the movie theater experience when so many people around you are persistently inconsiderate. I end up staying home just to avoid the irritation. Going to the movies ends up becoming a chore rather than a pleasure.
I have, for quite some time, predicting the end of the movie theater in general within the next fifty years, if not sooner. Frankly, this would be fine with me because the overall movie theater experience has sank just over the past decade with the advent of cell phones and the unreasonably high ticket and concession prices.
I would hope that maybe we would still keep revival theaters around to continue to get a flavor for what it was like to see classic films on the screen.
It absolutely astounds me how many people need to be surgically removed from their cell phones. We’ve all seen the morons who drive while using their cell phone, but the all-time classic for me was when I watched a man at the men’s room urinal hold his cell phone with one hand and take a piss with another!
That, my friends, may as well be the end of what remains of intelligent western civilization!
Oh, please, please, please make this happen in New York and on Long Island!!! And be sure to prohibit people from also SCROLLING their brightly-lit and distracting cell phones and what-not during a movie!
Do all of that and I just might start going to the movies more often than I have in recent years!
I fear that the more mindless today’s general moviegoing audience gets (and it’s already pretty freakin' mindless!), the more that our choices of films will be limited to recycled, plotless, CGI disasters that have plagued the screens more than ever.
The only thing that upset me about the death of Michael Jackson was that he died on the same day as Farrah Fawcett and stole all of the press she should have gotten!
It’s amazing how quickly people forgot that in addition to being a great musical artist (not to me, though…he wasn’t my taste in music), he was also a drug adict and accused child molester! Yet, despite that, it’s easy to see that his death is going to join the likes of celebrity-deaths-that-refuse-to-die just like Elvis Presley, John Lennon and Princess Diana.
Unfortunately, I was only 12 years-old in 1979 and was not allowed to see APOCALYPSE NOW. I saw it for the first time years later when it was edited for ABC-TV. In 2001, I did get to finally see it on the big screen as APOLCALYPSE NOW REDUX.
MPoI, compare movie theater going with this analogy…
If you go out to dinner one night at, say, The Four Seasons restaurant in NYC, you’re going to be sharing the room with a more respectable, dignified and considerate group of people – THAT’S your independent or art house movie theater.
If you go out to dinner one night at McDonalds, you’re going to be sharing the room with the more common, inconsiderate, intolerable group of people – THAT’S your average multiplex.
Don, it seems to me that most of today’s moviegoing audience (young and older) don’t even BOTHER to take in the experience of going to the movies anymore. It seems that they would rather spend their two hours talking, texting or scrolling their brightly-lit and very distracting cell phones – this after paying $10.00 or more for their ticket!
Somebody, anybody, please tell me the logic in this! Why would you bother going to a movie theater to do these distracting things when you can do them in the privacy of your home for free??
Don, I live in Great Neck, Long Island. But I used to live in New York City, which like L.A., had its share of common-moron-attracting multiplexes and select art and revival theaters where one could enjoy a more pleasant moviegoing experience. There’s an independent theater in Manhasset that I occasionally go to. But more than that, there’s a small theater in the Hamptons that I frequent a little more during the fall season when the annual beach goers have left and the summer blockbuster crap is over and done with.
I used to visit L.A. a lot about ten years ago. I went to the El Capitan (great theater!) in 1996. A year later, I permitted myself to sit through ALIEN RESURRECTION just so I could experience a movie at Mann’s Chinese Theater.
Unfortunately, I did not get to see STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE until it premiered on ABC-TV in 1983 with all of the extended footage. I had already experienced the action-filled speed of STAR TREK II on the screen, so by comparison, THE MOTION PICTURE seemed incredibly dull.
Over the years, while I still find the story very dull, the movie has grown on me for its visual effects and it’s more-than-obvious homage to the effects of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. I also love Jerry Goldsmith’s soundtrack. These reasons have been enough for me to have the film in my collection. I watched it just last week to comemorate the 30th anniversary.
And I also thought the 2009 STAR TREK sucked, sucked, sucked!
I agree with you, AIAlvarez – without a doubt, the WORST decade in the history of movie making!!! I think Hollywood sunk to its lowest level with a very obvious statement that they have completely run out of even semi-original and semi-intelligent scripts and stories.
The real tragic part of it all is that Hollywood just might stop and take notice of things if people would simply refuse to stop wasting their hard-earned time and money on sequels, threequels, remakes, franchise movies and CGI-based movies that offer nothing even resembling a semi-intelligent story.
Rise up, people! Stope allowing yourself to be insulted and taken in by the demons and monsters who control the movie industry!
Throughout the past decade, I’d have to say that my favorite super hero films were X-MEN (2000), SPIDER-MAN (2002), HULK (2003) and THE DARK KNIGHT (2008). Clearly, in 3 out of 4 cases, I went for and enjoyed the dark and the grim nature of all these characters. While I certainly am not an expert or a historian of the superhero, perhaps the idea is that being a superhero and fighting evil is SUPPOSED to be a grim, gritty and humorless job.
I avoided seeing THE DARK KNIGHT for weeks after its release because I decided that I was fed up with sequels of all kinds. Finally, though, I could not ignore the positive hype any longer and went to see it one afternoon at the Hampton Arts Theater in Westhampton Beach, Long Island and, admitedly, fell in love with it. However, I think Batman (as well as all superhero films) is finished with me. I’ve seen enough tales on the screen and I would prefer to end it on the positive note of THE DARK KNIGHT for myself.
You know, half the time, the popcorn is not even that fresh – it has either been sitting around all day and gets cold, it’s come out of one of those humungous bags I see sitting on the floor and isn’t freshly-popped, or the butter has been sitting around so long that it tastes rancid! This might be fine if you were paying a lot less for it, but the disgustingly high price you have to pay, your popcorn could, at the very least, be fresh, hot, with fresh butter and salt, and hey, here’s a great idea that might put an enthusiastic spin on the whole experience – free popcorn refills!
I’ve been sneaking in snacks and drinks into the movie theater for damn near 20 years now. It’s incredibly easy, especially during the colder months when you’re wearing a coat with deep pockets. I do it without hesitation, guilt or shame. Concession food prices are nothing short of monetary rape!
Theater owners would have to have their employees frisk their patrons and check their bags if they ultimately wanted to stop outside food from getting into their theaters. Yeah, like patrons are ever going to allow THAT to happen!
LIM, I suppose moviegoing today is a lot like WHITE CASTLE hamburgers – most people complain that it’s a horrible experience, and yet the establishment manages to stay in business.
Go figure.
I miss the days before I got married when I used to cheat the movie multiplex business by devoting an entire Saturday or Sunday and seeing three or four movies for the price of one at any given multiplex establishment. Security of any kind was such a joke!
No disrespect, longislandmovies, but you seem to stand virtually alone in your satisfaction with the movies and movie theaters are today. So many, many, many pissed off and disatisfied moviegoers can’t be wrong!
What is really on the screen anymore that is worth dragging your ass out of the house, into the multiplex, and dropping too much of your hard-earned money??? Sequels, threequels, remakes and computer-digital destruction of our planet???
I’d rather stay home and watch a Bogart or Cagney classic on DVD, and if it means the demise of the movie theater, then so be it!
Jay, one of the first steps to saving the movie theater experience is for all theaters to enforce a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to the use of cell phone, blackberrys, or any other kind of distractive or disruptive device, as well as the traditional talking and other forms of noise-making. If you want to talk on the phone or jerk off with your electronic playmate, then stay home where you belong!!!
One cannot enjoy the movie theater experience when so many people around you are persistently inconsiderate. I end up staying home just to avoid the irritation. Going to the movies ends up becoming a chore rather than a pleasure.
I have, for quite some time, predicting the end of the movie theater in general within the next fifty years, if not sooner. Frankly, this would be fine with me because the overall movie theater experience has sank just over the past decade with the advent of cell phones and the unreasonably high ticket and concession prices.
I would hope that maybe we would still keep revival theaters around to continue to get a flavor for what it was like to see classic films on the screen.
It absolutely astounds me how many people need to be surgically removed from their cell phones. We’ve all seen the morons who drive while using their cell phone, but the all-time classic for me was when I watched a man at the men’s room urinal hold his cell phone with one hand and take a piss with another!
That, my friends, may as well be the end of what remains of intelligent western civilization!
Oh, please, please, please make this happen in New York and on Long Island!!! And be sure to prohibit people from also SCROLLING their brightly-lit and distracting cell phones and what-not during a movie!
Do all of that and I just might start going to the movies more often than I have in recent years!
I fear that the more mindless today’s general moviegoing audience gets (and it’s already pretty freakin' mindless!), the more that our choices of films will be limited to recycled, plotless, CGI disasters that have plagued the screens more than ever.
Okay, all accusations of child molestations aside…
If you’re a drug additct by your own freewill, sooner or later, you’re going to “pay the check”! I said the same thing when Heath Ledger bought it!
Here it is, ladies and gentlemen…an article you can really sink your teeth into (ha, ha, ha!)!
The only thing that upset me about the death of Michael Jackson was that he died on the same day as Farrah Fawcett and stole all of the press she should have gotten!
It’s amazing how quickly people forgot that in addition to being a great musical artist (not to me, though…he wasn’t my taste in music), he was also a drug adict and accused child molester! Yet, despite that, it’s easy to see that his death is going to join the likes of celebrity-deaths-that-refuse-to-die just like Elvis Presley, John Lennon and Princess Diana.
I have to admit, I had never heard of this theater until I saw the film, PUBLIC ENEMIES, this summer.
Unfortunately, I was only 12 years-old in 1979 and was not allowed to see APOCALYPSE NOW. I saw it for the first time years later when it was edited for ABC-TV. In 2001, I did get to finally see it on the big screen as APOLCALYPSE NOW REDUX.
I make it an annual Thanksgiving holiday tradition to watch PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES.
MPoI, compare movie theater going with this analogy…
If you go out to dinner one night at, say, The Four Seasons restaurant in NYC, you’re going to be sharing the room with a more respectable, dignified and considerate group of people – THAT’S your independent or art house movie theater.
If you go out to dinner one night at McDonalds, you’re going to be sharing the room with the more common, inconsiderate, intolerable group of people – THAT’S your average multiplex.
Make sense?
I’ve been to two movies this summer – THE HURT LOCKER (only okay) and PUBLIC ENEMIES (excellent!).
Don, it seems to me that most of today’s moviegoing audience (young and older) don’t even BOTHER to take in the experience of going to the movies anymore. It seems that they would rather spend their two hours talking, texting or scrolling their brightly-lit and very distracting cell phones – this after paying $10.00 or more for their ticket!
Somebody, anybody, please tell me the logic in this! Why would you bother going to a movie theater to do these distracting things when you can do them in the privacy of your home for free??
Don, I live in Great Neck, Long Island. But I used to live in New York City, which like L.A., had its share of common-moron-attracting multiplexes and select art and revival theaters where one could enjoy a more pleasant moviegoing experience. There’s an independent theater in Manhasset that I occasionally go to. But more than that, there’s a small theater in the Hamptons that I frequent a little more during the fall season when the annual beach goers have left and the summer blockbuster crap is over and done with.
I used to visit L.A. a lot about ten years ago. I went to the El Capitan (great theater!) in 1996. A year later, I permitted myself to sit through ALIEN RESURRECTION just so I could experience a movie at Mann’s Chinese Theater.
Don, I abandoned the moviegoing experience BECAUSE I was complaining about it. What about it exactly is pleasureable anymore?