Star Trek "The Future Begins" - Movie Review

Star Trek, is an original American science fiction show created by Gene Roddenberry that aired in 1966 to 1969. The story took place in a futuristic universe about the captain and his crew members in a starship called The Enterprise in deep space. This original series was cancelled due to low ratings upon its third season however spawned a large fan based community which soon lead to conventional events and literally a society of star trek fan. Due to the massive popularity, people soon began to produce their own stories, short films, plays, and many more creative works of art.

Over the course of the many years, new shows were produced such as the animated series in 1973, Star Trek: Phase II in 1978, The Next Generation in 1987 (my birth year) to 1994, Deep Space Nine in 1993-1999, and Voyager in 1995-2001. Because of the fans, the Star Trek franchise has made it up to our present day.

And so…in 2009, in celebration of a 40 year old franchise, director J. J. Abrams and Paramount Pictures gives us “Star Trek” (2009).

As I was overly hyped out and excited, I noticed a very unfamiliar presence in the air. There were more old people then young people, but it didn’t bother me when I saw a group of thirty year olds cosplaying! Yes, I saw old school fanboys, and fangirls dressing up as their favorite character from Star Trek. It was pretty exciting to see this! I’m so glad my cousins came over all the way from Utica, NY. Because of them, I got to see one of the greatest summer movies to watch!

The story starts off as the film opens with the starship, USS Kelvin, where it was travelling in space until a massive black hole appeared out of nowhere. Moments later a space battle ship with very advanced weaponry comes out of the black hole firing at the USS Kelvin. The Captain of the mysterious battleship makes contact with Kelvin and orders that the captain come aboard their ship. The Captain had no choice, but to travel to an unknown ship in order to secure the safety of his crew, he tells First Commander James Tiberius Kirk he is now the captain and if he doesn’t return in 15 minutes, evacuate the ship. He heads out to the ship that is later told to the audience that it is a Romulan mining ship, the Narada, commanded by Nero, a rogue Romulan.

The captain of the Kelvin is killed in confusion when he was conversing with Nero when the captain revealed the year it currently was and where were they from. As Nero killed him, he ordered his men to destroy the USS Kelvin. Acting Captain James Kirk ordered everybody to evacuate as well as his pregnant wife who was delivering the baby at that moment. His wife shouts for Kirk to escape from the bridge to the escape pod, he tells her he will be on his way; he just needs to enable autopilot. As he attempts to tell the computer to set it to autopilot, the computer responds that the autopilot program was destroyed and only has manual pilot ability.

Over the headset, Kirk tells his wife that he can’t make it and hears the sound of his baby. As the ship is being destroyed, Kirk focuses on the conversation with his wife asking her what the name of the child should be. They decide that he should be named after himself, James Tiberius Kirk, Jim for short. The escape pod launches as the USS Kelvin is at a collision course for impact with Narada.

And so, from this point on, it explains the story of the child, James Tiberius Kirk, and his remarkable adventure that had very heart pounding thrill ride throughout the ENTIRE FILM from being a nobody to the future captain of the USS Enterprise and coming face to face with his unchangeable destiny.

I won’t be talking more about the story because I’ll just be giving out spoilers. Anyway, on to the next thing, seeing Zachary Quinto, the guy who plays Syler in Heroes, plays as Spock who is known to become the 1st Commander of the USS Enterprise (Co-Captain). Seeing him in the trailer, I laughed so hard, but when I was watching this film, he really did disappear into his role. He is definitely a great actor and has a lot potential for future films.

Asides from seeing Zachary, there is someone else in the film that made the audience literally pop their eye balls!!!!! I won’t spoil it, this is part of the movie experience, and when you see that person, YES that IS the ORIGINAL actor from the 1960 Star Trek series! ^_^

Sidd gives this movie a 10/10! I WILL WATCH IT AGAIN! INVITE ME IF YOU ARE GOING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Paper Airplane Chase vs. Birds & Beans – Game Review

If you’ve given into the slave of buying the newest technology out there and you’re also a rabid fan of Nintendo, then you’ve most likely picked up the newest Nintendo Dual Screen model, the DSi. What is the DSi? Well it’s a remake of the DS Lite with a thinner body, larger screens, dual cameras both inside of the machine and on the outside shell, a smudge free shell, and a Wii style menu to choose which of your downloads you will be playing. Yes, the DSi also adds a store to the mix, which will hopefully have Super Mario Bros. 3 in it in the near future…wink wink…but back to the store. Buying the DSi gives the customer 1,000 free points to throw around at the few selections given at launch. A few of the better choices include Dr. Mario Express and Warioware: Snapped! which actually brings great use to that camera that’s always point at you from inside your DSi. But for this review I’ll be focusing on two mindless games that are respectively said in the title. Both only cost 200 points, so if you really only have that much to spend, maybe my review will help.

Paper Airplane Chase

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to play as one of those paper airplanes you’ve fondly made in your third period English class? Able to completely control it as the aerodynamic paper flies through a castle full of transparent walls that, with a single touch, can make the poor plane explode into tiny little pieces? Well now you can with this mini-game taken right from Warioware. Simply put, this game just involves the player controlling their paper airplane’s decent down a spiral castle, trying to avoid those stated transparent walls. Sometimes they move, sometimes their big, sometimes their tiny, and sometimes they make narrow paths, all together forming as many possibilities as you can get by.

The Player can choose between three options:

1. Endless Mode. Fly your plane for as long as you can last while the game records how many floors you’ve descended and the speed at which you’ve cleared them.

2. Time Attack. Fly as fast as you can through eight stages. Likely you won’t score higher then 20 and after which there is nothing to do unless you really want to get under the 10 second barrier for bragging rights. Just so you know, no one will care. :/

3. Race. Well this is fairly simple. One player flies the white plane using the left and right diagonal pad, while the second player flies the red flag using the Y and A buttons. First to the goal wins. I would have liked to see a “race the computer” option.

All around it’s a good timewaster, which any game costing 200 points will likely be. I’ve heard that a few hi scores for endless mode have been around the 160 range, while my own sad score stands at 64 so far. :D But I’ll keep going at it.

Birds & Beans

Maybe you want something a little more difficult, something you feel like you’ll be playing for days on end just to get a higher score. Something..Something that reminds you of Yoshi! Birds & Beans as well as Birds & Beans 2 (unlocked in game after playing the first game 10 times or beating the high score of 10,000) is a crafty little game in which you play as this small bird with a Yoshi sized tongue, whose trying to get his grub on. The thing is, that he’s on  this easily breakable floor, and if any of the beans fall all the way to the floor it breaks away. This leaves the player awaiting a white bean that is able to fix a piece of the ground or a flashing white bean that not only fixes a lot of the broken pieces (believe me..by then you’ll be on a small island) and also destroys all beans in play. The longer you go without getting bonked on the head, the more points you can make. Also the higher the bean is the more points you can get for each grab. Altogether a very challenging game that I could see myself trying to beat until three in the morning.

Verdict

Both games can equally a waste of time (which is the purpose of their existence.) Paper Airplanes has a multiplayer mode, while Birds & Beans is really two similar games in one. If you can afford both games then I would say waste the 400 points. They’ll be enjoyable between those times when you’re sick of seeing your pokemon or playing hatsworth. If you can only afford one, then I would go with Birds & Beans. The mascot is cute and the game is quite a challenge.

Winner: Birds & Beans