my thoughts on the new Star Trek movie..

So what does a girl do when her finals are over? Other than make a half hearted attempt to pick up her room... she goes up to Northern Virginia to watch the new Star Trek movie of course! =D Teehee, I am one of the biggest Trekkies out there. I think my friend's jaw almost fell to the floor in surprise when he muttered "the starship Enterprise..." and I replied with "NCC 1701-D" once. I got the midnight showing at Fairfax corner, and here are my humble thoughts.

I have to say, it's not Star Trek to me, but it was a most excellent movie. It's not Star Trek in the sense that there's always a certain feel in Star Trek movie and episodes - darker, more.. weighty in terms of the moral and scientific matters they deal with. Of course, part of the feeling of Star Trek comes from more dated technology and special effects, but I felt that this movie was a cross between Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes and Battlestar Galactica. All the brightness! The fancy schmany technology. And horror of horrors, that awful beaming effect! I hate all the swirls of lights, the TNG version with the shimmering out was so much better. Call me a traditionalist but I was horrified by the light up toy that the Enterprise was. (But I still clapped along with everyone else when its first view was shown. Oh, and that battle scene in which Kirk's father sacrificed himself? Truly amazing, and I do admit to having a few tears in my eyes when he died).  

However, despite boos from this particular fan, it was still such a great movie. I loved seeing all the main characters when they were cadets (although Ahura's got to explain how she got such a big 'fro later on), and the actor who played Spock stole the movie for me. Kirk was meh, alright, but Spock was awesome. That scene when all the Vulcan children were being tested? Oh my goodness, I'd rewatch it just to witness that again. I really enjoyed watching Kirk beating the Kobayashi Maru test though. "Three Klingon warbirds decloaking.. what should we do?" "Oh really, well nothing!" Kirk pulls out an apple and eats it.. hahaha.  

I agree with so many fans that decried the breaking of continuity. But from that, it's obvious that they're restarting the franchise, and thus I can't hate the movie too much for doing that. I'd throw both hands up in support for anything that restarts Star Trek. TNG was my favorite out of all of them, but it's been much too long since it ended. However, other than resettling the Vulcans, what else can be in the new storyline? I await with baited breath. :D (And alright, it's a good thing that Vulcans are supposed to have a tight lid on their emotions, otherwise I'd be so severely depressed if my race just went from 6 BILLION to 10 THOUSAND. Goodness.)

momentary hiatus

For the next two weeks or so, my updates will be quite erratic indeed. It's finals time at UVa, and as much as I love blogging, I'm going to need all my brain power for finals. Wish me luck!

an amazingly fun and productive weekend

I haven't had a weekend like the one that just passed in a loooong while. I got absolute tons of stuff done and still went out to friend's apartments every night. Some magical combination of time of year, my mood, and the moon? Who knows.

Some highlights this past weekend included my sorority's scholarship tea, eboard bonding, and surprisingly, group meeings. We hold an annual scholarship tea in the spring and invite our favorite professors to it. For some reason, quite a few comm school professors showed up and I got to chat with my professors in what I term a more normal environment. It was one of those rare Saturdays that I had time to attend a sorority function, usually I'm whiling away my hours in the comm school. So I definitely enjoyed hanging out with my sisters, and especially sitting on my porch swing, reading a book for leisure (!!).

One thing about the scholarship tea is that it made me very thankful to be in a sorority and not in a fraternity. I'm not sure how fraternity guys do it, throwing parties every weekend that go into the wee hours of the morning. After one and a half hours of almost all my sisters in the house and some professors, I was ready to scream and throw everyone out for some peace and quiet. There was just soooo many people. How do guys do it, having loud music thumping through their house for part of the night and a good part of the morning, lots of random people they don't even know, and guests who trash their house, the damage being evident in the morning? I have no idea. *shrug.

Later that Saturday I went to hang out with the executive board of the peer mentoring group I'm president of at UVa. I had no idea one of my programming chairs was so good at mixing drinks, all the girls enjoyed some fruity concotions that night. I'm not sure why I hadn't thought of doing something like this with my board before, we're all really good friends and that night was just a lot of fun. We're actually having an end of the year banquet in one of the Pavilion gardens this Friday, I'm excited!! =D

And lastly, I really like my group for the second half of this semester and so actually enjoy our meetings. This is what a group's supposed to be like, I come into a meeting with a vague idea of a vague direction I want to go in, and I leave with a cohesive outline and plans for more research. I'm so impressed by the presentations we've come up with, and especially our Powerpoint slides. Oh goodness, I just had a final presentation on Monday and I'm pretty much in love with those slides. If I figure out how, I'll upload our presentation to give you guys an idea of what we do. The topic for our final presentation was the corporate social responsibility efforts of a particular industry. My group picked toys and games -- it was just the most logical and fun industry to pick.

Right now though I'm feeling like it's the calm before the storm. Finals are in two weeks, and I'm attempting to study for them, but just not really feeling motivated enough because they're still a bit off. I'll need to wrangle my mind into study mode this weekend.

block what? block five!

I had an excellent evening yesterday, and it's starting to feel like the end of school is creeping up on me. For all I like to gripe about the amount of work we get in the comm school, I have to say in all honesty and fairness, Rolls-Royce was a very nice corporate sponsor.

They threw blocks 5 and 6 a picnic dinner at Dean Z's pavilion (Dean of Mcintire) -- a full troupe of executives flew down for this, and they gave each one of us a paperweight with the words "ICE 2008-2009" inscribed, and an actual piece of one of their engines inside. They also announced the winners of the Rolls-Royce essay competition (topic this year: what to do about executive compensation in the face of bailouts, or as close as I can remember after spending a mind numbing six hours in the comm school computer lab). Someone from my block won, and someone from block six was runner up. This was only a taste of our victory to come...

To cap off the evening, we had some friendly inter block competition. We had a huge game of tug of war on the Lawn, and my block utterly owned block six! =D We played four times, two times block against block, once against girls, and once against guys. We won all four times, even when the other block had professors on their side! =D In the midst of all the yelling though, we scared off quite a few classes on the Lawn. In fact, one of my sorority sisters ran over to ask me what was going on as her professor led her class back into the classroom. Whenever it's a good day, professors usually bring their classes out to the amphitheater or Lawn and soak up some rays.

monsters in 3d?

I watched Monsters vs. Aliens over the weekend -- it was also the first movie I'd watched that was in 3d. I had to put the 3d glasses on over my regular glasses because I'm too scared to put stuff in my eyes = no contacts. I really appreciated the 3d, but not sure if it made the movie more real. I think the next step for movie theaters is virtual reality, in which the action is actually happening around you. ..that'd give directors a headache to film though.

I think I might've vaguely talked about movie theaters in an earlier post, so this one will explore the entertainment options offered at UVA. The first thing that comes to mind is definitely the theather in Newcomb. The theater is where tour groups go first for their information sessions, and it transformed into a movie theater from Thurs - Sat for students. The movies are pretty recent, with showings of big favorites such as Pirates of the Caribbean and Harry Potter. The biggest thing is, they're only $3, and popcorn is only $1. Definitely a big money saver on the college student's wallet.

Another one of my favorites is to attend the UVA drama department's production. Each student receive $35 worth of Art$ dollars every semester, and they're free to spend those on free drama production tickets. I can't say enough good things about our drama department. Quality acting, excellent sets and costumes, and amazing directing. I took a drama class my second year and watched my teacher in the production of Hedda Gabler, and then watched some friends in.. ooh darn I forgot the name! But it was also an amazing production.

The student activities building (where you go for orientation) also hosts several productions -- ones from the First Year Players are the most notable. Only first years are allowed to actually perform in the First Year Players, the other years are delegated to set and crew. This is so that first years aren't shunted into the background just because they're first years -- I remember feeling very impressed when I first learned about this at the activities fair. I'm a big fan of FYP as well, I went to watch a musical/modern take on the Princess and the Pea my first year and spent the night laughing. Their production this semester was Sweeney Todd, but alas and alack, I didn't have time to watch it.

Then there's always the Lawn to watch Shakespeare on the Lawn -- they perform exclusively in front of the Rotunda. I think a tour group passed by one of their productions a couple of weeks ago, I hope the tourists weren't too weirded out. =P They have a couple impromptu performances too I think, but I've yet to bump into one.

Speaking of impromptu, we have two impromptu troupes here -- the Weathermen and Amuse Bouche. Amuse Bouche is a relatively new one, I think they started last year. I've seen their shows at several club meetings I was present at, and was definitely entertained. Thinking about all the performance opportunities I've attend and heard about at UVA, I'm definitely impressed by the level of talent found here. I haven't even gotten to talking about our musical productions in Old Cabell Hall yet! But class calls, I'll be back!