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Reviews
Portrait of a Showgirl (1982)
An exercise in nostalgia
When this movie originally aired on television in May of 1982, I was just wrapping up my freshman year at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, majoring in Hotel Administration. At that time, not even the most forward thinking of the professors running the program at that time could have ever guessed the massive growth/changes that would occur in the city over the next 30 years.
The Las Vegas of 1982 is barely recognizable in the context of today's city. Many, maybe most, of the big hotels of that time are now gone, replaced by mega-resorts. Caesar's Palace, where most of the action in this movie is set, was easily the class of the town at that time, and while it remains one of the better resorts, it is clearly not the number 1 place in town. Even the slot machines kicking out coins with a jangle is largely a thing of the past--they have been replaced with debit/credit card readers that take your money almost without your realizing it! Like many Vegas old-timers, I miss the city that is portrayed in this movie. It was a smaller town and much greater attention was paid to the individual visitor. That said, the boom we experienced for almost 30 years made many wealthy people.
As a movie, this isn't half bad. Watching reminded me why I once had a crush on Lesley Anne Warren. Tony Curtis (who lived here for many, many years) is his usual charming self, and Rita Moreno is up to her normal high standards as an actress.
If you are a longtime Las Vegan, someone who has gone there over a period of many years, or just curious to see what the old town was once like, catch this movie. It's a pretty good way to spend a couple of hours.
Star Trek: The Doomsday Machine (1967)
One episode where everything comes together
"The Doomsday Machine" is the first Star Trek episode that I can clearly recall seeing, when I was six during the summer of 1970, shortly after the the show went into syndication. Interestingly enough, I was aware of this episode from about the time it first hit the network in the fall of 1967. My cousin, who is three years older than I, had seen the show and had constructed a homemade model Enterprise and Doomsday Machine. We had several battles, and I was always stuck being the planet killer.
For me, this is just about a perfect episode, certainly the best of the bunch in my opinion. You start out with a great plot. The story comes alive in a great script. Excellent actors, especially guest star William Windom, give inspired performances. With the exception of the final shots of the Constellation going into the planet killer, the special effects are, at least in my opinion, terrific. There is great action, and there is a wonderful, feature film quality score by Sol Kaplan to tie it all together and add perfectly to the mood of each scene.
Unlike some other people, I have absolutely no use for the new, "enhanced" CGI effects. I freely admit that I view these as akin to colorizing Casablanca, but beyond that, the quality of these is just plain terrible. Most of the new effects throughout all the episodes are more akin to what you would expect to find in a video game. They are not up to the quality of CGI in any feature film, and in my opinion aren't up to the quality of CGI in the average Sci-Fi network flick or series. But even if they were great, I would still be vehemently against them. The work done by Matt Jefferies, Wha Chang, the people at Howard Anderson, as well as all the others who were involved, was cutting edge for the time and deserves to be seen. Any work of art should be at least partly judged by the context of the time in which it was created. There is one effect that literally chokes me up every time I see it. After the initial commercial break, the action is rejoined with a shot of the derelict Constellation floating in space. This, combined with Kaplan's haunting but majestic music serves to remind the viewer of what has become to this once proud, powerful ship. I know that the model photographed was nothing more than an AMT Enterprise with some ad-hoc damage and re-arranged numbers with the Constellation name, but it is a deeply powerful scene.
There is never a dull moment in the entire 48 minutes. As a kid, I had the entire script memorized and would often recreate the show with my own models. Fortunately, I eventually grew up and "got a life" as William Shatner once put it, but my love of the show in general, and this episode in particular, has never waned. A number of Treks, both on the original show and in subsequent series, have come close to the quality of this episode, but it has yet to be matched. If you have never seen an episode of the original Trek, this would be the one introduce you to the show. It's as good as they get.