MDC.MIKE%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA (07/08/84)
Saw ST III. My spouse and I were both amazed at the *incredible* job of fine acting by DeForrest Kelly ( Bones ). We both felt it was the best ST movie yet, but it seems to me that one has to have seen ST II to get the most out of it, it can't stand alone. Someday they would make a great double-feature by running ST II and III back to back. The book made from ST III is even better than the film. It contains about twice as many scenes and much more information than the film does. Dont read the book first, or you will consider the movie to be skimpy. Saw Last Starfighter at a preview last night. Because it never aspired to be great it managed to be a very good show. It was well done, nicely balanced, real and believable ( well, almost ). This film will appeal to a wide audience, and you are almost guaranteed a good time. I thought I saw a couple of visual puns or in-jokes that I would like to mention here ( ** Probably not a Spoiler **) : a) The effects were made using many hours of Cray X-MP supercomputer time, and look like well done computer graphics. But one of the consoles in the command center bears a strong resemblance to the operator console of the CDC 6600, which was Seymour Cray's first supercomputer! b) At one point a character says something like "I am going to try to ram-charge it" and then we see him fiddling with something that could be a RAM board from a PC of some type.... -------