Chris Pine in a Blue Tux

Banishing all memories of powder blue prom tuxes, Chris Pine matches his navy blue tux to his gorgeous blue eyes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Benefit.

Chris Pine Film Fest

Last night I watched the film Bottle Shock on Netflix on my computer.  Imagine Alan Rickman, Bill Pullman and Chris Pine in the same movie, and no, it's not in space.  It takes place in Napa Valley in 1976, and Rickman is the wine snob who showed that California wines were just as good as French in a blind contest he held in Paris.  Chris Pine plays the hippie, and I do mean hippie with long stringy hair, son of a winery owner (Pullman).  It's a mildly amusing film, and fun in that's it's a true story.  Besides wearing tight 70's jeans and t-shirts, there's not a lot to Pine's slacker character, Bo.

Today, I'm doing a sort of mini-Chris Pine film festival.  I'm watching my Star Trek DVD as I type this, and watched clips on Youtube of Just My Luck and Princess Diaries 2 to see what he was like in some romantic roles. 

My conclusion is that Chris Pine must have had one hell of an audition for Star Trek, as previous to that he basically had mostly Ken doll leading man roles.  He's so amazing and full of personality in Star Trek, and before that, meh.  Maybe there's some small gem or guest star part I haven't seen yet.

Thank you J. J. Abrams, for finding this rough cut diamond, and giving it a little polish!  Because he was certainly rough. 

Although you've got to hand it to the Chris.  You do have to be quite an actor to fake attraction to Lindsay Lohan!

Completely Gratuitous - Chris Pine in GQ

Ahhhh, Chris Pine. One of my favorite things about the new Star Trek film! See more pics from the GQ photo shoot, and a short interview here.

I'm not the only one with a crush on Chris. Kevin Smith raved about Pine to MTV and said that Star Trek made Chris Pine a movie star. "I'd watch that dude do anything," Smith said with a laugh. "I'd watch that dude have sex with my wife at this point. He's such a good actor."

MTV Shows

Weekend Star Trek Update

Star Trek - Movie Review

In a word, Star Trek was "Awesometastic," or at least that's what my 16 year old son called it. He has only the vaguest idea of who Kirk and Spock are, and I'm not sure he's ever seen a full classic episode. He loved it, and that shows that J. J. Abrams has a huge success on his hands. This, unlike many past Star Trek films, is not just for the diehard Trekkies who know all the inside jokes. It's an origin story and a prequel, so while there are plenty of fun Easter eggs for the long time fans, it's a film easily accessible to all the new fans that J. J. Abrams just made for the franchise.

I really have to hand it to the writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. While J. J. Abrams admits that he was not a huge fan of Star Trek, they both obviously are. They have honored the history, while coming up with an ingenious solution to how to revitalize Star Trek. Time Travel and paradoxes are traditional for Star Trek, but I just loved how they worked it to show us these characters we've known for so long, and yet tweak things just enough to make it really interesting. I'm sure the fans will have lots to chew on discussing all the differences from the "canon". They also included all those iconic lines that fans want to hear, but they happened in a very natural part of the story, and never felt forced ("Fascinating"). This movie has fast exciting action, but it's all about the characters and that is what made it really entertaining to me.

Focusing on the origin of Kirk and Spock and their relationship -- totally inspired. Both Zachary Quinto and Christopher Pine had tough jobs and big shoes to fill. I have to say I was really impressed with Christopher Pine. He did not do an impression of Shatner, but made Kirk his own capturing the essence of the character.

But the actor who really surprised me was Karl Urban as Bones. He was just great as Dr. McCoy from that very first scene with Kirk. They took all his history, the divorce, his fear of flying, and just gave him a great cantankerous entrance to the story. Loved it! From the limited films I've seen Urban in (LOTR, Bourne, etc.) I just never would have pictured him doing such a good funny Bones. "I may throw up on you!"

Each main character gets a little moment to shine, and Simon Pegg was my husband's favorite as Scotty. "I like this ship. It's exciting!" Eric Bana's evil Nero was good, but not great. But then, who can match Ricardo Montalban as Khan or the Borg.

Three and a half stars. Huge thumbs up! My husband is a big fan. He even has two phaser rifles and an honest to God Klingon desk from the Christies auction. He loved the movie and believe me, he's a harsh critic. For super fans like him, we just looked at each other several times during the film at the little gifts the writers gave us. Captain Pike was the captain of the Enterprise in the original series pilot and features in the episode "The Menagerie" which has Pike in a wheelchair, and Spock as his former first officer. So cool that Pike was in this origin movie, and at the very end, we noted that he was in a wheelchair in the final ceremony. Just tons of cool touches like that, but still lots of exciting action, too. As the writers said in a recent interview:

I think in its simplest form "Star Trek" has been about naval battles, essentially submarine battles in space, so everything was a bit slow, which is great. It is a wonderful staple of Trek because that forced storytellers to come up with amazing ways for the bridge crew to deal with these problems. Star Wars was about World War II dogfights. As a kid, I loved Trek for the characters, but I loved Star Wars for the speed. But there is no reason why those things should be mutually exclusive. Also, at a practical level, if we going to be introducing Star Trek to a new generation of kids, and given what kids are used to now with Star Wars and Transformers and Iron Man and the speed of those movies, it was going to be very hard to bring them back to a slow naval battle. So we thought must be respectful to the naval battle aspect of the franchise, and yet we can bring something else to it.

I'm looking forward to seeing it again to catch even more Easter eggs! Star Trek has always been about hope and optimism in the future. I think the producers lucked out by releasing this movie at the beginning of Obama's first term. It's a time we could use some more hope and optimism, just like the sixties when the series premiered.

Also, the writers have really opened things up for sequels. Star Trek had gotten rather ossified with over 40 years of history. Now, they could even face familiar situations with different outcomes. Javier Bardem as Khan, anyone?

Trivia note -- J. J. Abrams has been friends with actor Greg Grunberg (Heroes) since high school and finds a way to put him in everything he does. Greg is the voice of Kirk's stepdad on the phone early in the film.