[cochise]

Wondering about the pic at the drive in. Looks like its in Lindsay,On. Anyone know?

it's The Mustang drive In, in Picton, just a short hop, skip, jump, and ferry ride from the bathouse

So I took my one daughter to the Mustang last night to see Land Of The Lost (not a good movie, but Will Ferrell could recite the phone book and make me laugh). Anyways, the owner Paul, who has a great sense of humor himself, always hops on the microphone to basically give a run down of the past week and talk about the upcoming movies, yadda, yadda. Well, he ended up bringing up the subject of the boys using the drive-in in their photo shoot. Said something to the effect that they didn't ask, or didn't even come in to say hello to him. He now figures that if it is ok for them to use his drive-in on their website, he is going to use their music on his website..... . He wanted to make sure that this got passed along to the boys!!!!

Just to let everyone know, he was completely joking about the whole thing, he wasn't being serious or po'ed or anything. Paul has one of the funniest, driest senses of humor going. On his website he probably writes the best movie reviews out there going. For instance, here is his recent reviews for Star Trek.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.thechequesinthemail.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=108&Itemid=45">http://www.thechequesinthemail.com/inde ... &Itemid=45</a><!-- m -->

Pasty nation is beside itself with the release of the latest Star Trek. It’s really good and you don’t have to be a 40 Year Old Virgin to enjoy. Dare I say it. You can enjoy it even if you don’t know your Klingons from your Romulens. By the way if I misspelled that run upstairs and tell your mom to stop cutting the crusts off your sandwiches and fill her in.

Here’s the thing. JJ Abrams is a great storyteller and that’s all entertaining movies really need. His resume is quite impressive for such a young gun. Felicity, Alias, Lost are his TV triumphs and Mission Impossible III his big screen bonanza and he wrote the screenplay for Armageddon and Regarding Henry. I’m impressed.

He’s new blood with some respect for the old traditions. Despite retelling the story of the Enterprise with an all new cast he does bring in Leonard Nimoy as the connecting thread between the old and the new. When I first heard the original Spock was in it it seemed like a huge overreach but it really works. Nimoy was always the best actor of the bunch anyway.

So this is a prequel which allows all the new guns to strut their interpretations on the classic characters of several generations, and the casting is excellent. The new Spock looks like an age regressed copy of Mr. Pointy Ears himself, and Scott, McCoy Chekov and Uhuru are all pitch perfect. It’s nice to see them when they can actually pass Satrfleets physical demand, instead of the bloated sickly charicatures of themselves they had become, most of whom couldn’t have passed Wal-Marts physical test for greeters.

Kirk is another story. The film starts on the day little Jimmy is born, with his dad heroically launching his wife who is in labour from the dying ship he has just taken command on. Later we see the tweenie James love for speed and then in real time we find out how much Kirk likes getting beaten up. I had to chuckle at the number of fights Jim gets into only to come out on the wrong end of that business. The guys in the bar, Spock, the bad guy with the messed up face. All of them take him out to the woodshed but he seems to thrive on it.

It’s a good role and you can see the seeds of the arrogant Kirk starting to emerge. His brashness disappears and he behaves almost deferentially when he meets the senior version of Spock, and it’s really the only time the cartoon character disappears.

The special effects are very good and more importantly to me, the over explained dialogue about technology and how things work is kept to a minimum. Since this is a prequel all of the stuff we came to know and in the case of the technodorks love so for instance Mr. Scott beams himself inside a giant water turbine and there’s no mention of a vulcan mind mill.

It’s just great fun and it works on ever level. I think the simple story line serves the franchise well and opens the door for several new episodes. I like the characters, the nuance and the fun. It really was just great fun and I didn't have to dress up like my favourite android or reptile man. In an homage to the original series Abrams even kills off the guy in the red shirt, which was the running joke among Trekkies.

Lost may have taken it’s title too seriously but this version of Star Trek really is all of that and with Abrams at the helm maybe it really will boldly go where no movie has gone before. If not we can at least count on several more variations on a theme til this crew starts gumming their food like the last one. A $72 million opening guarantees that.As always other opinions are welcome but wrong.

That’s it for this week. The cheques in the mail and I’m outta here.
Paul

So Mav, Paul is expecting a big apology fro the boys! Got me to thinking what a great place the drive-in would be for an outdoor show!