Shi'Kahr mon amour
(Hmm. I need an icon of ST XI Vulcan. Seen any around?)
OK, here's the thing: it's pretty safe to say that I LOVE THIS MOVIE. Seen it five times so far in the theater, gushed about it to pretty much everyone I know, thrown myself headfirst into the new fandom - the works.
Of course, the movie has problems. I don't really care.
What I do care about, and what I feel I need to articulate before I can go on celebrating the Great New Shiny (it's K/S BlazingHotFOREVER in this LJ, peeps), is this:
The destruction of Vulcan broke my fucking heart.
OK, OK. I know Spock is the only likable Vulcan we meet in the movie (until his dad comes around later on); and I know that it's pretty much impossible to comprehend the eradication of an entire planet of brilliant (if arrogant/kinda racist/outwardly cold) people, let alone grieve over it; I suspect the same would have happened if Earth got imploded for plot advancement purposes - the devastation is simply too immense. The movie itself makes the tremendous loss tangible by focusing it on Amanda, Spock's mother. It's perfectly OK to be sad over her death and Spock's utter isolation once she's gone, because grief in fiction works when it's personal/easy to relate to via one or two characters.
And yet... I'm grieving over Vulcan. Because I LOVED IT.
Why?
First of all: yes, I know. The planet is red and dry and pretty hostile all around, all ragged blades of cliffs and steep hills and desert dust. If you don't think that's beautiful, no argument here - eye of the beholder etc. - and I'd actually agree with you: that place may be fit for an afternoon of doing 'shrooms a daytrip/picnic with friends to escape the city for a few hours, but that's about it.
However, I didn't fall in love with the planet itself: what I fell completely, totally, head-over-heels in love with is the way the Vulcan urban architecture works WITH this harsh natural environment.
If you took one look at the brief pan of Shi'Kahr (the Vulcan capitol) and saw Daniel Libeskind's sharp-edged structures, you'd be only slightly right. DL's buildings can be quite gorgeous, but the shock of their diagonals and jutting corners is disquieting more often than harmonious - unlike Shi'Kahr.
Here is the best image from the movie I could find, displaying a pretty wide scope of the city:
When I look at this image, what I see is fantastic harmony: the buildings blend into the natural environment with their shapes, colors, arrangement, drawing on the rock formations to formulate their urban equivalent fully complementary to the space. No idea if Vulcans are ecologically friendly (though they're vegetarians and an intellectually advanced species, so I'm leaning liberally towards yes on that issue); but there is no doubt in my mind that they LOVED their planet. Only a civilization deeply devoted to honoring its home world, in all its hostile-looking glory, would build its homes so carefully in accordance and celebration of the said world's natural shapes and structures.
Here is the conceptual drawing of the city, found (among many other gorgeous images) on this site:
It's quite visible here that Vulcan buildings are meant to look like cave formations - stalactites and stalagmites - as if growing organically out of the rock. This is especially significant in the light of our only glimpse at Vulcan spirituality in the movie, when Spock rushes to find the High Council gathered in the Hall of Ancient Thought - the holy place housing the katric ark, situated inside a cave in Mount Seleya. What this means is: Vulcans are at one with the land upon which they live, in body and mind, and they incorporate this ideology of oneness with nature into their architecture at every level.
Now, for the purposes of full disclosure: when I look at images of Shi'Kahr, I see the Chrysler Building hanging stalactite-like from one of the cliffs. (You can see it at the beginning of this brilliant vid by talitha78 - three seconds in, illuminated by the omnipresent lens flare!) The Vulcan city thus reminds me of NYC = instant love from the bottom of my heart. And yes, it's too art-deco-meets-socialist-city-planning to really be LIKE New York; the colors are wrong; and my town does not blend into its natural environment nearly as well... but the hint of resemblance is THERE, I can't unsee it, and I'm sure it has something to do with my intense love for Vulcan.
(Btw, I'm not the only person in the world to notice a touch of Manhattan in Shi'Kahr: this Salon movie review points out the Chrysler Building lookalike as well. I'd even venture to say that the destruction of Vulcan might be drawn as a symbolic echo of 9/11, perhaps necessary in any contemporary narrative of great universal reinvention - the tremendous, nearly incomprehensible loss after which we're left craving a future of global optimism and youthful re-definition, a la ST XI - but I am NOT, I repeat, NOT saying that Spock is a New Yorker. Even if Vulcans are rude elitist bastards who wear a lot of black and whose classrooms totally remind me of the Museum of Natural History. *cough*)
Anyway, back to the fantastic beauty of Vulcan buildings.
IMHO, it was a stroke of genius to use the Sky Rose Chapel for filming those interior shots in the Science Academy (a.k.a. Spock tells his examiners to fuck off and DIAF scene). Just look at this gorgeous building:
You can see more images of the Sky Rose Chapel here, and more of the architect E. Fay Jones' work in this hilarious post that actually ponders his possibly Vulcan heritage. (And really, shouldn't we all? Check out those interwoven brackets - gorgeous and functional. Gah!)
All you really need to know about Jones is that he started out with the design of tree houses and developed a style of intimate, organic, superbly elegant, inside-working-with-the-outside architecture which is, quite simply, transcendental in its beauty. A wonderful example is the Thorncrown Chapel (I warmly recommend that you take the virtual tour of the place), which fully displays the way Jones visually incorporated nature into his building designs - indeed, the environment and the building are one.
And that kind of architecture was chosen to act as Vulcan in the movie. Really - I cannot draw enough hearts around this location choice.
I love that Vulcans nurtured this kind of relationship in their everyday lives with their home planet. Sure, it's disappointing that the civilization founded on the principle of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations - and flourishing amidst such urban architectural harmony - is still rife with intolerance and prejudice. Also, it must have been quite a struggle for Spock to leave the environment that boasts such inherent balance, and have to look for the resolution of his inner conflict in a place as comparatively messy and hectic as Earth... but hey, we're all glad he did. :)
I loved Vulcan in this movie. I found it breathtakingly beautiful, much more interesting than any other environment (sexy new Enterprise included), and I still feel kind of furious and bereft that it was destroyed. Plus, I'm somewhat identifying on a rather personal level because, um. I sort of lost my country - which sucked even without the eradication of the entire place via black hole, though partial destruction can be pretty heartbreaking too. As a result, that type of culture-wide loss in any narrative tends to... ping me a certain way, shall we say. There's "you never can go home again" and then there's "no, REALLY, you never can go home again, PERIOD, we totally mean it, good luck coping with this for the rest of your life."
Er. Right.
Anyway! I don't really expect anyone to agree with this interpretation of Vulcan, or share my grief over the death of a fictional planet, or even read this far. This is a selfish post, which I had to write and illustrate with these pictures, because I loved what I saw of Vulcan and... I suppose I wanted to preserve it the best I could.
So there. Hope you enjoyed the pretty.
***
Aaaaaand because this post is SEVERELY lacking in smut (and this LJ has a rep to protect), I must turn once again to Captain Fine - whose career, bless his socks, provides many an ogle-worthy image.
Take Bottle Shock, for example (currently available for streaming on Netflix). It's NOT a good movie, despite the gorgeous locations all over Northern California and the cast including Bill Pullman, Alan Rickman, Freddy Rodriguez, Eliza Dushku, and our hot-even-as-a-goddamn-hippie Captain Fine. But the movie is very, very pretty and it will make you want to drink a lot of wine. And maybe go visit some vineyards, which is really NOT THAT BAD.
Oh, btw, the reason I'm calling our boy's hair in this movie Reverse Cowgirl 'DoTM is: I'd still totally DO him, but the hair is so hideous I'd have to opt for the reverse cowgirl position. *cough*
Don't believe me? Onto illustrations!
I for one think that the hair can TOTALLY be forgiven on account of these clothes. For lo, they are TIGHT. And there is walking around with Alan Rickman, which makes any image at least 300% sexier by default.
Also, there is Bradley Whitford ex machina! Seriously, he shows up in one scene and SOLVES EVERYTHING. Because he is Bradley fucking Whitford. I kinda hope he got paid in wine to be in this movie.
But forget about all that; I'm not really trying to sell you the movie. What I'm selling is pure porn. SEE?
Yeah, the pants are tight. And he spends a few very happy-making scenes sprawled out on his back, because Bill Pullman is kinda good at kicking his ass. (They box to resolve conflicts. It's really quite a functional family.)
Seriously. Reverse cowgirl. It's the way to go.
And with that felicitous thought, I leave you to your Tuesday. :)
(P.S. More pics and a truckload of gifs here on ondt_startrek.)
OK, here's the thing: it's pretty safe to say that I LOVE THIS MOVIE. Seen it five times so far in the theater, gushed about it to pretty much everyone I know, thrown myself headfirst into the new fandom - the works.
Of course, the movie has problems. I don't really care.
What I do care about, and what I feel I need to articulate before I can go on celebrating the Great New Shiny (it's K/S BlazingHotFOREVER in this LJ, peeps), is this:
The destruction of Vulcan broke my fucking heart.
OK, OK. I know Spock is the only likable Vulcan we meet in the movie (until his dad comes around later on); and I know that it's pretty much impossible to comprehend the eradication of an entire planet of brilliant (if arrogant/kinda racist/outwardly cold) people, let alone grieve over it; I suspect the same would have happened if Earth got imploded for plot advancement purposes - the devastation is simply too immense. The movie itself makes the tremendous loss tangible by focusing it on Amanda, Spock's mother. It's perfectly OK to be sad over her death and Spock's utter isolation once she's gone, because grief in fiction works when it's personal/easy to relate to via one or two characters.
And yet... I'm grieving over Vulcan. Because I LOVED IT.
Why?
First of all: yes, I know. The planet is red and dry and pretty hostile all around, all ragged blades of cliffs and steep hills and desert dust. If you don't think that's beautiful, no argument here - eye of the beholder etc. - and I'd actually agree with you: that place may be fit for an afternoon of doing 'shrooms a daytrip/picnic with friends to escape the city for a few hours, but that's about it.
However, I didn't fall in love with the planet itself: what I fell completely, totally, head-over-heels in love with is the way the Vulcan urban architecture works WITH this harsh natural environment.
If you took one look at the brief pan of Shi'Kahr (the Vulcan capitol) and saw Daniel Libeskind's sharp-edged structures, you'd be only slightly right. DL's buildings can be quite gorgeous, but the shock of their diagonals and jutting corners is disquieting more often than harmonious - unlike Shi'Kahr.
Here is the best image from the movie I could find, displaying a pretty wide scope of the city:
When I look at this image, what I see is fantastic harmony: the buildings blend into the natural environment with their shapes, colors, arrangement, drawing on the rock formations to formulate their urban equivalent fully complementary to the space. No idea if Vulcans are ecologically friendly (though they're vegetarians and an intellectually advanced species, so I'm leaning liberally towards yes on that issue); but there is no doubt in my mind that they LOVED their planet. Only a civilization deeply devoted to honoring its home world, in all its hostile-looking glory, would build its homes so carefully in accordance and celebration of the said world's natural shapes and structures.
Here is the conceptual drawing of the city, found (among many other gorgeous images) on this site:
It's quite visible here that Vulcan buildings are meant to look like cave formations - stalactites and stalagmites - as if growing organically out of the rock. This is especially significant in the light of our only glimpse at Vulcan spirituality in the movie, when Spock rushes to find the High Council gathered in the Hall of Ancient Thought - the holy place housing the katric ark, situated inside a cave in Mount Seleya. What this means is: Vulcans are at one with the land upon which they live, in body and mind, and they incorporate this ideology of oneness with nature into their architecture at every level.
Now, for the purposes of full disclosure: when I look at images of Shi'Kahr, I see the Chrysler Building hanging stalactite-like from one of the cliffs. (You can see it at the beginning of this brilliant vid by talitha78 - three seconds in, illuminated by the omnipresent lens flare!) The Vulcan city thus reminds me of NYC = instant love from the bottom of my heart. And yes, it's too art-deco-meets-socialist-city-planning to really be LIKE New York; the colors are wrong; and my town does not blend into its natural environment nearly as well... but the hint of resemblance is THERE, I can't unsee it, and I'm sure it has something to do with my intense love for Vulcan.
(Btw, I'm not the only person in the world to notice a touch of Manhattan in Shi'Kahr: this Salon movie review points out the Chrysler Building lookalike as well. I'd even venture to say that the destruction of Vulcan might be drawn as a symbolic echo of 9/11, perhaps necessary in any contemporary narrative of great universal reinvention - the tremendous, nearly incomprehensible loss after which we're left craving a future of global optimism and youthful re-definition, a la ST XI - but I am NOT, I repeat, NOT saying that Spock is a New Yorker. Even if Vulcans are rude elitist bastards who wear a lot of black and whose classrooms totally remind me of the Museum of Natural History. *cough*)
Anyway, back to the fantastic beauty of Vulcan buildings.
IMHO, it was a stroke of genius to use the Sky Rose Chapel for filming those interior shots in the Science Academy (a.k.a. Spock tells his examiners to fuck off and DIAF scene). Just look at this gorgeous building:
You can see more images of the Sky Rose Chapel here, and more of the architect E. Fay Jones' work in this hilarious post that actually ponders his possibly Vulcan heritage. (And really, shouldn't we all? Check out those interwoven brackets - gorgeous and functional. Gah!)
All you really need to know about Jones is that he started out with the design of tree houses and developed a style of intimate, organic, superbly elegant, inside-working-with-the-outside architecture which is, quite simply, transcendental in its beauty. A wonderful example is the Thorncrown Chapel (I warmly recommend that you take the virtual tour of the place), which fully displays the way Jones visually incorporated nature into his building designs - indeed, the environment and the building are one.
And that kind of architecture was chosen to act as Vulcan in the movie. Really - I cannot draw enough hearts around this location choice.
I love that Vulcans nurtured this kind of relationship in their everyday lives with their home planet. Sure, it's disappointing that the civilization founded on the principle of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations - and flourishing amidst such urban architectural harmony - is still rife with intolerance and prejudice. Also, it must have been quite a struggle for Spock to leave the environment that boasts such inherent balance, and have to look for the resolution of his inner conflict in a place as comparatively messy and hectic as Earth... but hey, we're all glad he did. :)
I loved Vulcan in this movie. I found it breathtakingly beautiful, much more interesting than any other environment (sexy new Enterprise included), and I still feel kind of furious and bereft that it was destroyed. Plus, I'm somewhat identifying on a rather personal level because, um. I sort of lost my country - which sucked even without the eradication of the entire place via black hole, though partial destruction can be pretty heartbreaking too. As a result, that type of culture-wide loss in any narrative tends to... ping me a certain way, shall we say. There's "you never can go home again" and then there's "no, REALLY, you never can go home again, PERIOD, we totally mean it, good luck coping with this for the rest of your life."
Er. Right.
Anyway! I don't really expect anyone to agree with this interpretation of Vulcan, or share my grief over the death of a fictional planet, or even read this far. This is a selfish post, which I had to write and illustrate with these pictures, because I loved what I saw of Vulcan and... I suppose I wanted to preserve it the best I could.
So there. Hope you enjoyed the pretty.
***
Aaaaaand because this post is SEVERELY lacking in smut (and this LJ has a rep to protect), I must turn once again to Captain Fine - whose career, bless his socks, provides many an ogle-worthy image.
Take Bottle Shock, for example (currently available for streaming on Netflix). It's NOT a good movie, despite the gorgeous locations all over Northern California and the cast including Bill Pullman, Alan Rickman, Freddy Rodriguez, Eliza Dushku, and our hot-even-as-a-goddamn-hippie Captain Fine. But the movie is very, very pretty and it will make you want to drink a lot of wine. And maybe go visit some vineyards, which is really NOT THAT BAD.
Oh, btw, the reason I'm calling our boy's hair in this movie Reverse Cowgirl 'DoTM is: I'd still totally DO him, but the hair is so hideous I'd have to opt for the reverse cowgirl position. *cough*
Don't believe me? Onto illustrations!
I for one think that the hair can TOTALLY be forgiven on account of these clothes. For lo, they are TIGHT. And there is walking around with Alan Rickman, which makes any image at least 300% sexier by default.
Also, there is Bradley Whitford ex machina! Seriously, he shows up in one scene and SOLVES EVERYTHING. Because he is Bradley fucking Whitford. I kinda hope he got paid in wine to be in this movie.
But forget about all that; I'm not really trying to sell you the movie. What I'm selling is pure porn. SEE?
Yeah, the pants are tight. And he spends a few very happy-making scenes sprawled out on his back, because Bill Pullman is kinda good at kicking his ass. (They box to resolve conflicts. It's really quite a functional family.)
Seriously. Reverse cowgirl. It's the way to go.
And with that felicitous thought, I leave you to your Tuesday. :)
(P.S. More pics and a truckload of gifs here on ondt_startrek.)