"Its Five Year Mission: To Explore Strange New Worlds..."

"Under The Skin" - Best of the Decade

Jonathan Glazer's "Under The Skin" is an unsettling, one of a kind experience. Through the eyes of an extraterrestrial woman (?) we see North Scotland as series of stark empty benches, crowded shopping malls, and forests full of decay and rot. Glazer and his cinematographer capture grimy grey and brown flats, coupled with lush unearthly reds and the blackest of black voids, in which young men are lured to their demise by this being from beyond. With black hair, red lipstick-coated lips, her blue eyes conveying a blank apathy, which turns to wonder, then fear, Scarlett Johansson gives a truly alien performance. Not since David Bowie in "The Man Who Fell to Earth", has a performer captured the way someone not of this earth would perceive our world for the first time.

Glazer's palate definitely sports a few a Kubrick space trip reference points. Not surprising, as the late director's influence on Glazer dates back to his music video for Blur's The Universal, which places the band in a cross between heaven and the Korova Milk Bar from "A Clockwork Orange".

One sequence in particular, reminds one of fellow music video director Chris Cunningham's infamous 2000 erotic installation Flex.

But, despite any influences, Glazer makes this hypnotic trip all his own.

Of special note, is the all-consuming musical score by Mica Levi, the sound design by Johnnie Burn, and the music supervision by Pete Raeburn.

The full effect of their combined efforts is an aural symphony of raw sound which plays like a transmission from alien angels mixed with the barrage of Lou Reed's 1975 feedback opus Metal Machine Music.

Topping the "winter at the Dakota" spell of "Birth" and the bloody comic mayhem of "Sexy Beast", "Under the Skin" is Jonathan Glazer's masterpiece.

Discovering Michel Faber's 2000 novel was the best thing that ever happened to him. And dare I add, to us, as well.

Great Performances: Peter O'Toole in "My Favorite Year"

Benjy Stone: Alan Swann, afraid? The Defender of the Crown? Captain from Tortuga? The Last Knight of the Round Table?

Alan Swann: Those are movies, damn you! Look at me! I'm flesh and blood, life-size, no larger! I'm not that silly God-damned hero! I never was!

Benjy Stone: To me you were! Whoever you were in those movies, those silly goddamn heroes meant a lot to me! What does it matter if it was an illusion? It worked! So don't tell me this is you life-size. I can't use you life-size. I need Alan Swanns as big as I can get them! And let me tell you something: you couldn't have convinced me the way you did unless somewhere in you had that courage! Nobody's that good an actor! You are that silly goddamn hero!

The above exchange is from 1982's "My Favorite Year", which garnered Peter O' Toole a 1983 Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. In it, Benjy Stone(Mark-Linn Baker), a nebbish comedy writer (inspired by Woody Allen and Mel Brooks) confronts his idol, the dashing, swashbuckling Errol Flynn-type movie star Alan Swann, over the fact that the man he has spent his life admiring is, in fact, a fearful drunk. Swann is afraid to do a live Sid Caeser-inspired type of comedy program, and is retreating to his liquid companion. Swann is also afraid of life in general, of rejection by the daughter he abandoned, and of his stardom, which had dwarfed his very existence.

Like many of his performances, as Swann, O'Toole was able to capture heartbreak, a joie de vivre, and sense of style, while channeling a carnival of emotions (often at the same time) across his beaming, radiant face.

One of the best performances, in one of my favorite films.

To Boldly Go: Gene Roddenberry

 
"I believe in humanity. We are an incredible species. We're still just a child creature, we're still being nasty to each other. And all children go through those phases. We're growing up, we're moving into adolescence now. When we grow up - man, we're going to be something!"

"I did nothing...except get caught with my britches down!"

"He tasks me. He tasks me and I shall have him! I'll chase him 'round the moons of Nibia and 'round the Antares Maelstrom and 'round perdition's flames before I give him up!"

                        - Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban)

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"Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull."

                                              - Rod Serling

The Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few...or the One

"I have been...and always shall be...your friend...Live long...and prosper."

1982's "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" was the first film I saw that dealt explicitly with human mortality. It taught me about courage, self-sacrifice, friendship, and honor.

The screenplay, credited to "Time After Time" director Nicholas Meyer and Jack B. Sowards (most of which was re-written by the former) tells the story of a Captain James T. Kirk, who, having been promoted, feels worn out, useless, dead inside, acutely aware of his mortality.

Ironically, it is through a confrontation with his past (an old enemy, a former lover, a son he never met) and the death of his best friend that he feels a new appreciation for his life and his destiny, being a starship captain.

At the end of the film, Kirk reflects on Spock's death,  and stares out at that Genesis planet, and says, quoting the Dickens novel that his friend gave him for his birthday, " It's a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done before. A far better resting place that I go to than I have ever known."

"Is that a poem?" asks Dr. Carol Marcus, the mother of Kirk's son.

To which Kirk replies, "No. Something Spock was trying to tell me. On my birthday."

And the rest, as they say, is history.