• Movies/Entertainment,  Trailers

    Sweet Trailer…’Star Trek Beyond’

    The Summer season is heating up, and while Captain America’s third installment is winning over film fans, a little known sci-fi property is warming up for its third at bat. That’s right, Justin Lin (of Fast & Furious fame) took the helm of the Enterprise (while J.J. Abrams was hard at work at an equally obscure science fiction property), and this looks great! Star Trek Into Darkness left many fans cold, so if this trailer is any indication of what Lin can bring to the table, then sign us up for Star Trek Beyond. Engage! “Star Trek Beyond,” the highly anticipated next installment in the globally popular Star Trek franchise,…

  • Editorials

    Star Trekking Into Nitpicking

    (Like most of my editorials, this piece contains really specific spoilers for the film being discussed, which in this case happens to be Star Trek Into Darkness. If you haven’t seen the film, you should first check out Go, See, Talk!’s dueling reviews by me and Bill, respectively; you should also avoid reading this piece, because it’s guaranteed to ruin the experience for you.) I am by no means a Trekkie. The last time I watched a Star Trek program during its televised run was in 1999, when the series finale for Deep Space Nine ran in June. I haven’t seen a good chunk of the Star Trek movies, but of those that I have seen, I only…

  • Movies/Entertainment,  Reviews

    On Second Thought, Bill’s Take: G-S-T Review…Star Trek Into Darkness

    There’s a vitality to director J.J. Abram’s latest foray into the Star Trek universe. While he may not be going where no man—or this series in particular—has gone before, it appears his goal is to give the series forward momentum that can be sustained even if he doesn’t return to the helm. Certainly, Abrams leaves the franchise in a much better place than where he found it. What you look for in a Trek film largely depends on what generation you belong to and outside of that, what series you most align yourself with. There’s a rich history through the various decades that Trek lived through on the boob tube.…

  • Movies/Entertainment,  Reviews

    G-S-T Review…Star Trek Into Darkness

    There are two layers to Star Trek Into Darkness. One exists at the surface level and involves everything that we see, hear, and experience while watching it in a theater, and the other involves the efforts that occurred below the line, prior to the film’s arrival at the multiplex. Just like its 2009 predecessor, the former layer proves to be the sequel’s saving grace and the latter holds it back from being truly great; the marriage between star-making, charismatic, invested performances and ham-handed, hackish screenwriting ultimately yields the same results J.J. Abrams got with his last venture into Gene Roddenberry’s beloved sci-fi iconography, a movie that works in the moment as blockbusting…

  • FourScore,  Movies/Entertainment

    FourScore Match-Up #15: “The Great Space Race”

    At warp speed, J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek Into Darkness is set to scream into theaters this week. So with that in mind it seemed like the perfect opportunity to dust off our FourScore series to help kick off new and upcoming entries to our running feature (which has been long overdue for another installment). Today, we look to the future and also to the past to champion some of the best soundtracks to some influential and seminal space-themed films that boldly go where no one has gone before… With that said, today we’ll examine one of the funnest space operas of all time, a suffering franchise’s adrenaline fueled reboot that brought together (probably for the first time) fans…

  • Movies/Entertainment

    Soundworks Collection Profile: Michael Giacchino

    Now that the announcement and full teaser trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness have been released, lots of questions have been raised about J.J. Abrams’ sequel. Questions like who is Benedict Cumberbatch‘s character John Harrison? and recently “Are You the 1701?“. But no question is more important to us film score geeks at G-S-T than “What will Michael Giacchino bring to the table for the next Star Trek film?“. Granted Michael already provided the score for the 9-minute prologue (which plays before The Hobbit), but even he admits that that theme may in fact change for the final product. Why? Well because J.J. and the team at Bad Robot are deep in post-production…

  • Movies/Entertainment,  Trailers

    Sweet (Announcement) Trailer…'Star Trek Into Darkness'

    In case you weren’t aware, J.J. Abrams knocked his reboot of the Star Trek franchise out of the park. Suffice to say he had some mighty big expectations for a follow up. Admittedly a number of film fans (Star Trek or otherwise) weren’t too impressed with the poster that was released earlier this week, but have faith in that Bad Robot dear friends because this intro teaser trailer will blow you away with a capital Bwuuuuuum! With Abrams again at the helm, he brings back he fantastic cast of the Starship Enterprise which includes Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, Anton Yelchin and John Cho. So fire up this bad boy, fyi…

  • Movies/Entertainment

    'Star Trek Into Darkness' Gets a Poster

    Since the first teaser poster for J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek Into Darkness hit the web a few hours ago, it’s been repeatedly pointed out that the image draws a lot of inspiration from The Dark Knight‘s own one-sheets. I don’t know if I can avoid adding my own voice to that echo chamber of common observation whatsoever– it’s spot-on. Nobody’s talking about the former wholly mirroring the latter, but the similarities between the two are rather striking and tough to ignore; after all, Nolan’s second Bat-film bore the promise of massive influence right out the gate in its theatrical release four years ago. We’ve seen that influence play out in earnest this year…

  • Composer Series,  Dallas Symphony Orchestra,  Interviews,  Movies/Entertainment,  Video Interviews

    Exclusive: Video Interview…Film Composer Michael Giacchino

    To close out their Masters of Film Music series, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra has invited Oscar-winning film composer Michael Giacchino (pronounced “Juh-keen-oh“) to conduct a retrospective concert from May 18th – 20th. The set list, which he’s calling Stories of Islands, Balloons and Space, will include a number of his most popular and well-loved themes/music including Lost, Up, Star Trek, Super 8 and Ratatoulie. While he’s garnered plenty of acclaim and accolades this will be one of the few time he’s ever conducted his work. But before he takes the stage for his 3 night engagement (the first time that an orchestra in the United States has performed a complete range of his work), he agreed to meet with G-S-T for an exclusive interview. Join…

  • Movies/Entertainment,  Quick 5/Top 10

    G-S-T Top 10 – Favorite EPIC Films (Part I)

    I’ll say right off that this list probably won’t contain many of the films that you’d expect to see when I put EPIC in the title. When I come up with a Quick 5 or a Top 10, I usually try to choose films that are either off the beaten path or ones that just don’t get enough attention. Hey, it’s what I do. So before we start, let’s just take a look at this blurb which helps define and identify the makings of an epic. I think this is important as most people (mainly the ones I know) think an epic is simply a “sword and sandal” film. As written below,…

  • Movies/Entertainment,  Off the Shelf

    Off the Shelf…'Star Trek'

    I can proudly say that after years of being a “born and raised” Star Wars fan, I am now starting to lean the other way…no, not the Dark Side, but I believe I am becoming a “neo-Trekker”. Weird, but this is the best ‘sci-fi’ film I’ve seen in a while and it really got me considering the other Space Opera property that I had overlooked for so long. Also Star Wars has just become continually disappointing since Episode I, so for me this is a welcomed change of pace. So here we are with J.J. Abrams‘ masterful direction of a Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman screenplay (we’ll forgive them for their Revenge of…

  • Movies/Entertainment,  Quick 5/Top 10

    G-S-T Top 10 – Best Films of the Decade (Round 2)

    Hey All, this is the last minute contribution from Rob, your friendly neighborhood foreign correspondent chiming in with my thoughts from downtown Yokohama, Japan. In the end, the 2000’s may be most notable for two things, “comic book movies” and “re-movies“.  We’ve definitely run the gamut of superheroes and gone from the A tier hero’s, the D tier wannabe’s in comic book movies and with Re-movies being the remakes/reboots/rehashes of more things than should be legally done in the space of 10 years.  With that said, mine is going to be a rather predictable list, but stopping to think of what I liked over the last ten years (and there are some hard hard…