Side note: Any review without spoilers is called advertising. I now strongly feel the only relevant reviews (of film or otherwise) are those written for an audience who has also read/seen/consumed the item being reviewed.
I am a Star Trek fan. But...
I grew up on Next Generation, saw a lot of Voyager (but never saw the end), saw a bit of Deep Space 9 and none of Enterprise. I have seen the occasional Original Series episode and have seen all of the movies. I remember very little of any of the movies except the first one, the last NextGen film and "the whale one".
I have no real love or connection with any Original Series characters. I am a William Shatner fan.
I'm such a non-Star-Trek-fans that I had no idea that the movie was an alternate Star Trek universe until Vulcan, and even then I had to really think about it.
So...
I liked the new movie. It was exciting. It looked nice. It invoked deep memories of the old movies. I came out of it generally satisfied.
On reflection there is much in the movie I didn't like.
I felt many of the "Galaxy Quest" humour bits were misplaced ("help, I'm stuck in a pipe", "Kirk is sleeping with a Green Woman!", "red shirt", "Walken!", "Numb Tongue? I can fix that!").
I hated Scotty's little friend. OK, I liked his eyes, and his whimper.
I hated all of the snow planet. The chase. The snow. The planet. Spock. Why not just land the pod next to Spock? It's just as dumb.
I hated the Kirk-as-a-kid car chase, although I think Beastie Boys was an inspired song selection. I spent most of the scene ignoring little-Kirk, instead thinking about Shatner-Kirk listing to Beastie Boys.
Perhaps unfairly in the context of every other action movie, I took offence to the bar-brawl. Glassing someone is never cool Kirk.
So... lots to hate.
And yet, I enjoyed it. I guess I expected nothing. Less than nothing. The fact it was alternate-universe helped, even though that generally annoys me (Terminator 3 I'm looking at you).
I chose to see it as a Star Trek side project. A side story that overall is irrelevant. One that need not continue. And yet, I see hundreds of Kevin J. Anderson books about the alternate history retelling of the Star Trek universe. This fills me with unfulfilled vomiting.
Mid way through the film I started imagining the whole set up like that in "Southland Tales". An alternate universe, accidentally created, and the inevitability of relationships and connections.
Wanky I know. Can't you just see Spock and Kirk floating through space, leaning forward to touch hands as a black hole rips apart Earth beneath them?
I'll admit that I recently read TekWar (from the fantastic mind of William Shatner) and to help enjoy that massively average book, I thought constantly about how it would be possible to create a world where some technology is rubbish (everything appears to based on fax machines) and yet have flying cars and human perfect robots. I decided it had something to do with Mexico.
I think that explains everything...
Update: I felt bad for not properly mentioning Sylar as Spock. He was made for this part and there has rarely been a more perfect casting. Loved him. The others were fine, but in a completely different league.
Moonchild Trio are Mike Patton (vocals), Trevor Dunn (bass) and Joey Baron (drums), with music written by John Zorn. The first two albums are just Mike/Trevor/Joey, while the last two add extra musicians, including Zorn himself.
The first two albums released in 2006 ("Moonchild: Songs Without Words" , "Astronome") were interesting but didn't excite me much. The bass/drums combination is great, but all Patton appears to do is scream randomly over the top. I'd like to pretend I found something artistic in the combination but I didn't.
"Six Litanies for Heliogabalus" released in 2007 is much better. More musicians are added and the music gains a lot for it. It's a much more coherent piece of music I was happy to concentrate on for an hour, with enough musical variety to prevent boredom. There is only so much screaming a man can take.
"The Crucible" (2008) returns more to the feel of the previous two albums, but with Zorn on sax. While I found it interesting to listen to Patton and the sax play off each other, and I loved one song ("Witchfinder"), I liked this only slightly more than the first two albums.
If I was to buy any, I'd get "Six Litanies..." on CD, and maybe get "Witchfinder" on iTunes.