Star Trek

In case you haven't heard, the new Star Trek trailer is out. I saw it the other day when I went to see the new Bond movie, and now that it's online, I have spent the obligatory 15 minutes poring over it frame-by-frame. I would encourage you to watch it (go here for the official, high-quality goodness). I've got to say, I'm pretty pumped about this. It certainly looks like a special-effects extravaganza. A special-effextravaganza, if you will. Some of it even looks special-extraordinary. I just hope the effects are used special-effectively to service the plot, and not just for special-effect. At any rate, it's a very well put-together trailer, which I very much respect. I've always been a big fan of well constructed trailers (one of my favorites is the teaser trailer for Superman Returns [higher quality here - just scroll down], which brings me to my next point.

When my friends and I were at the theater (inside the lobby, after having our tickets taken), we were greeted by a slick guy who asked us, "Do you like movies?" Unsure of what was happening, we said that yes, we do in fact like movies, and he proceeded to invite us to some sort of focus group thing where they would supposedly screen several movie trailers and then get our input, and pay us $75. He gave us each a piece of paper with the details, and on the back of each, he scrawled his name (John) and his personal number. I asked who was putting the thing on and he replied (somewhat coyly), "A major movie studio." Sounded too good to be true, but we took the papers and left. Unfortunately, none of us were able to make it to the shindig; I really would have liked to have seen what it was all about (and I looked up the agency who was doing the research - they were reputable). The thing that kind of gave us a bad feeling about it, though, was that not only did John give us his personal number, but he also said (in a way that made it seem like it had slipped out) that the group was all male. Now, that surely was just the demographic that they were looking for, but to aid in your understanding of the situation, I've produced the following picture of my recollection of John. [ Please note that as my lame-ass brother has yet to provide me with Photoshop, I had to use a crappy online drawing program. So this is far below my usual level of artistry.] I guess I will always have to look back on this time with the bittersweet sorrow of missed opportunities. Or maybe the address on the sheet would have taken me to John's personal cabin out in the woods... (click the picture to enlarge and enhance the quality [image quality, not artistic quality])