Latest news with #StarTrek
Irish Independent
20 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Glamour of Hollywood greats on show at Wicklow exhibit
The exhibition was a unique showcase of work for the Bray venue, which appealed in particular to fans of the silver screen, featuring pencil portraits from the golden age of cinema – Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, Joan Crawford and Judy Garland. Lots of original art was on display, from vintage movie memorabilia and small dioramas. Shane McCormack is a graduate of Bray Institute of Further Education and IADT, and as a freelance illustrator specialising in portraits from film and TV, has worked on licensed subjects like Star Wars, Star Trek, The Walking Dead and The Hobbit. His short film, The Hotel, which was screened as part of Culture Night last September, is a fascinating piece of social history focusing on the former Bray Head Hotel – a favourite of the stars when filming at Ardmore, and where scenes from Frank, Breakfast on Pluto and The Commitments were also shot. In the notes for the exhibition, it presents an artist 'fascinated by how the photograph or film frame captures a fleeting moment, one that is forever frozen in time yet continues to evolve in its significance'. "What remains poignant is how these images continue to resonate today as artefacts of both escapism and aspiration, as well as reminders of the complexities behind the facade. The power of image in vintage Hollywood lies not just in its glamour, but in its ability to shape memory and influence culture long after the original light has faded. Through this exploration, Shane seeks to uncover the layers of artifice and authenticity that intersect in the history of cinema and visual culture.' You can find out more about Shane on his website, – if you know your movies, you should know the inspirational character behind that one. Just don't confuse it with Harry Lyme. The exhibition closes at Signal Arts Centre in Bray on Sunday, June 22.
Geek Wire
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Wire
William Shatner and Neil deGrasse Tyson banter about human follies and the final frontier
'Star Trek' captain William Shatner and astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson sit down for a photo op after their rollicking fireside chat in Seattle, titled 'The Universe Is Absurd.' (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle) William Shatner set a record as the oldest human to go into space at the age of 90 — but at the age of 94, he's not that interested in taking a second space trip to break his own record. 'You know, I had such a meaningful experience,' he told GeekWire. 'Maybe I tend to think of it like a love affair. You want to go back to that love affair? Maybe not. It was such a great moment.' The original captain from 'Star Trek' revisited that emotional moment from his Blue Origin suborbital spaceflight on Wednesday night during a rollicking chat with celebrity astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson at McCaw Hall in Seattle. This week's performance grew out of a meetup that the astronomer and the actor had last year during a space-themed Antarctic cruise. The two had such a good time that they worked with producers to organize an onstage follow-up. Tyson said Seattle was chosen as a promising venue for what was billed as a 'one night only' event. 'I knew I have a very loyal, large fan base here in the Pacific Northwest, centered on Seattle,' he said during a pre-show press availability. 'I think Bill does, too. Is that right?' 'I don't follow that as closely,' Shatner deadpanned. The banter went full-tilt during the evening's onstage chat. Shatner recalled his origins as a struggling actor in Canada, 'moving from city to city, and fetid bed from fetid bed.' 'Am I the only one who doesn't know what 'fetid' means?' Tyson joked. 'That means it didn't smell good, and it wasn't me,' Shatner replied. Then Tyson took his turn, recounting his rise from a dog-walker to astrophysicist to cultural icon. 'Do you know I have six cameo appearances in feature-length movies?' Tyson asked Shatner. He proceeded to reel off his credits, including a cameo in 'The Last Sharknado: It's About Time' and a role as as 'astrofishicist' Neil DeBass Tyson alongside SpongeBob SquarePants. 'Can you believe that this highly educated Ph.D. has spent 15 minutes telling you about his bit parts in these incredibly bad movies,' Shatner shot back. The two continued to thrust and parry over topics ranging from quantum physics to penguin poop. But Shatner took center stage with the recollection of his real-life space trip in 2021, aboard a New Shepard suborbital rocket ship built by Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin space venture. Shatner said the space odyssey had its origins in a conversation that he had with Bezos years previously. 'I want to Blue Origin, met with Jeff Bezos and suggested, because he hadn't flown his rocket yet, maybe I should go,' he recalled. 'So we left the building … he's got a model of the Starship Enterprise under a dome in his lobby … I went home under the impression that might work, and COVID hit.' That put the topic on hold for a year. When Blue Origin scheduled the first crewed New Shepard flight, the crew list included Bezos — but not Shatner. 'So he went up first, and was noted, and then came back and he sent me a message: 'Would you like to go up second?'' Shatner said. 'I'm not gonna go up second. That's the vice president. For God's sake, I want the president.' Then Shatner thought about it again. 'You know, the feeling of space, the final frontier. Why not go, out of a sense of curiosity, what it's like? So, I said yes,' he said. Shatner recalled that he was brought to the launch site a day before the rest of the crew, and taken on a tour that involved a climb up 11 flights of stairs to get to the top of the launch tower. 'And then we walked back down and went back to the headquarters,' he said. 'I thought, they must have brought me here to see if I could walk up 11 flights of stairs.' 'It would be embarrassing if you died halfway up,' Tyson said with a smile. Shatner has often remarked that his trip reminded him of the fragility of life on Earth, and he returned to that theme on Wednesday night. 'I see how vulnerable the Earth looks,' he said. 'It's a moat of dust in the sky. It's got 12,500 feet of oxygen, and then you're dead. … It's a vulnerable, precious piece of rock that supplies us with life, and we have destroyed it.' When he touched down and left the spaceship, Shatner began to weep. 'I couldn't understand why I was crying,' he said. 'I went someplace to sit down and try and understand what had happened to me. And I realized I was in grief for our Earth.' During the pre-show interview, Shatner said that feeling has stayed with him over the past four years. 'In that time, the United States has canceled its position in global warming. It's outlandish. It's like, with a knife at your chest, saying, 'Well, you're not going to kill me,'' he said. ' And what's sad is, we have the ability. I mean, there are companies now that are working on the teetering edge of reality to fix what we've got, and we're not financing and going at it like the Manhattan Project.'
Geek Culture
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Culture
Star Trek Comic 'The Last Starship' Resurrects Captain James T. Kirk
Captain Kirk will no longer find himself in the grave, as he's set to return in a new Star Trek comic. The iconic character is back from the dead in Star Trek: The Last Starship , due out this September, with the modern Starfleet future serving as the new setting. Notably, this marks a departure from the usual fare, which places any story, screen, or comic before the character's death in 1994's Star Trek: Generations . Per The Hollywood Reporter, the upcoming work is penned by Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing, who, alongside writing for Marvel, DC and other publishers, notched an Eisner nomination for their previous Star Trek title for IDW. Adrián Bonilla is onboard as illustrator. 'Forget everything you know about Star Trek. The Last Starship is a new crew, a new era, and a completely different tone; our aim is to be literary, intense, innovative, and most of all, accessible,' said Lanzing. 'We're bringing you into the Federation's darkest hour through the brilliant, noir-soaked lens of artist Adrián Bonilla with zero homework required. Longtime Trek fans will have a deep and fascinating reading experience, to be sure – this is a pivotal moment in Trek history that's never been even glimpsed before – but above all, The Last Starship is a dark and complex sci-fi you can hand to anyone,' he added. The series takes place during The Burn, a galaxy-wide disaster that caused the detonation of every active warp core and led to the near-collapse of the United Federation of Planets. Now mysteriously resurrected, Kirk will need to lead a new crew and ship to uphold Starfleet's mission of unity across the cosmos. The debut issue of Star Trek: The Last Starship launches on 24 September, featuring a primary cover by Francesco Francavilla and variants by Skyler Patridge and Michael Cho. Check them out below: Si Jia is a casual geek at heart – or as casual as someone with Sephiroth's theme on her Spotify playlist can get. A fan of movies, games, and Japanese culture, Si Jia's greatest weakness is the Steam Summer Sale. Or any Steam sale, really. IDW Comics Star Trek Star Trek: The Last Starship
Miami Herald
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
It all began in Miami for TV genius Desi Arnaz. Then he made it big with Lucy
Desi Arnaz is returning to Miami as the focal point of a new book. Long before he loved Lucy, Arnaz loved Miami. The city and the budding celebrity fueled one another. 'Desi's time in Miami is where he became a professional musician, honing his skills with audiences and creating a sensation with the conga,' author Todd S. Purdum said in an email to the Miami Herald while traveling on his book tour. 'It was a crucial stop on his journey to stardom in the days when Miami Beach featured the top stars of show business, who were impressed by Desi's charisma and appeal. He and his parents were grateful for the foothold that Miami gave them to pursue the American dream.' Purdum will read selections from his new book, 'Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television,' Saturday evening, June 21, at Books & Books in Coral Gables. The book is a tribute to a man who started his entertainment life in Miami. He died in 1986. Arnaz's TV vision The book's title isn't hyperbole. Sure, television existed before 'I Love Lucy,' the sitcom Arnaz starred in with his wife, Lucille Ball and which debuted on CBS on Oct. 15, 1951. But Arnaz's vision shaped the way we watch TV today. Do you enjoy streaming syndicated reruns of 'I Love Lucy' as well as 'Law and Order,' 'Friends' and 'Star Trek?' Thank Arnaz. Arnaz and Ball's production company, Desilu, formed during their 20-year marriage and 'I Love Lucy' partnership, was behind that 1960s 'Star Trek' TV show, too, a sci-fi staple that turned into a television and film franchise. Just another of the duo's behind-the-scenes achievements. 'He was a proud yet simple man with chispa, spark. He never forgot where he came from even as he built a studio empire in Hollywood and changed forever the way television sitcoms are created,' former Miami Herald Editorial Board leader Myriam Marquez wrote in a column in 2010. Arnaz's band life in the 1930s, '40s and '50s was the basis for the musical 'Babalu' that was playing at downtown Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts at the time. 'To this day, most sitcoms are shot with three cameras and before a live audience using video. He started with film until video was developed. Arnaz's technique opened the way for TV reruns and syndication,' Marquez wrote. Leading conga lines 'Babalu' took its title from Arnaz's signature tune, a joyous Afro-Cuban song he performed as host and music guest of the Feb. 21, 1976, episode of 'Saturday Night Live' during its first season. Arnaz, at 58 and starting the last decade of his life, closed that show by leading the 'SNL' cast on a conga line through the NBC studio in New York. This exuberant televised live showcase of the conga line with the late night 'SNL' Not Ready for Prime Time Players cast came a decade before Gloria Estefan's 'Conga' English-language breakthrough. Nearly 50 years ago, that 'SNL' performance was a reprise of the way Arnaz, in his struggling musician days, introduced the conga line to the U.S. direct from Miami Beach in 1937. He had done so from the stage of the Park Avenue Restaurant on the corner of Collins Avenue and 23rd Street, once a main artery of Miami Beach's entertainment scene. He initially dubbed his conga line his 'Dance of Desperation.' In October 2024, city of Miami Beach officials installed a permanent marker honoring Arnaz at Collins Park near where the Park Avenue stood. Today, the site of that former restaurant-entertainment venue at 2200 Liberty Ave. is the Miami City Ballet's headquarters. You can stream that 'SNL' episode featuring Arnaz on Peacock because of his original vision to film 'I Love Lucy' with multiple cameras, giving studios the opportunity to share classic TV moments for generations to come. Miami's blueprint Even that inspired vision could be traced to the actor-musician's earliest days in Miami and Miami Beach. Arnaz simply had an eye for a room and how to maximize the space for aesthetic as well as monetary purposes. From the 'Desi Arnaz' book: '[H]is father had joined some other Cuban exiles in starting a business to import Mexican tile — roof tiles, bath tiles, kitchen tiles. The Pan American Importing and Exporting Company was capitalized with all of $500 and was operating in a small building on Third Street southwest in Miami. Desi suggested to his father that they close off a portion of the warehouse as living quarters and save the $5 a week they had been paying the boardinghouse. Purdum's 'Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Changed Television' recounts Arnaz's career, starting with his arrival in Miami from Cuba in 1933 with his father, Desiderio Sr. The elder Arnaz had been Santiago's youngest mayor and a member of the Cuban House of Representatives before Fulgencio Batista's first coup. Arnaz's maternal grandfather, Alberto de Acha, was an executive at rum producer Bacardi & Co. The man born Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III in Santiago de Cuba on March 2, 1917, arrived penniless in Miami before his 17th birthday. He initially made a living in the U.S. cleaning canary cages. In the fall of 1936, he enrolled at Miami Beach's St. Patrick Parish School on Garden Avenue and completed his formal education at Miami Senior High School. In Cuba, Arnaz once envisioned a law career. After school at Miami High, Arnaz reinvented himself as a self-taught musician in Miami Beach. Without that South Florida start, it's likely there would have been no Lucy to love. Arnaz's father remained in Miami until his death in 1973. After 'I Love Lucy' ended in 1960, Arnaz continued his career in production and performing from a base in California. But he helped support relatives who lived in Miami. 'He did make a number of emotional return visits — to perform or celebrate the first Carnaval — and he always retained a warm affection for Miami and the friendships and formative experiences he had there,' Purdum said. Arnaz was the first king of Carnaval Miami in 1982. He played his music with his children Lucie and Desi Jr. at that inaugural event before a crowd of 35,000 on Southwest Eighth Street. Miami in the 1930s 'It's easy to forget that when Desi and his father arrived in Miami, it was 25 years before the mass exodus of Cubans after Fidel Castro's revolution,' said Mindy Marqués Gonzalez, editor of 'Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television' and a vice president at publisher Simon & Schuster. 'The main Cuban emigre community was in Tampa and Miami was still a sleepy southern town. They would have been one of the few Cubans here. In some ways, Desi and his father were trailblazers for the thousands of Cubans who would follow and transform the city into a multicultural mecca,' said Marqués, a former Miami Herald executive editor. This earlier era of Miami was where Arnaz and a school chum, Sonny Capone (son of the gangster, Al, who had lived on Miami Beach's Palm Island), would get together after class to sing and play the bongo drums. Arnaz parlayed his talents to a spot in a rumba group called the Siboney Septet, named for the seaside Cuban town just outside Santiago, that was playing at Miami Beach's original Roney Plaza on Collins Avenue. For $39 a week. Arnaz's Latin rhythm skills on the conga drums and infectious stage mannerisms came to the attention of popular band leader Xavier Cugat. 'Miami was the formative stage of Desi's new life in America after Cuba,' Marqués said. 'It's here that he picked up a $5 guitar at a pawn shop and started playing again, like he did in Cuba. And that led to his being 'discovered' by Xavier Cugat, which led to everything else.' That introduction to Cugat, and joining his orchestra for six months, led to Arnaz's musical career at New York clubs and his winter return engagements with his own band at Miami Beach entertainment venues like La Conga on 23rd Street. Thanks in part to Arnaz's musical chops and other musicians he played alongside, the area came to be known by locals and music fans as a 'corner of Havana in Miami Beach,' Purdum reported in his book. 'Desi left his mark, without ever denying who he was,' Myriam Marquez, the Herald's former opinion editor, wrote in her 2010 column. 'How hard must it have been 75 years ago in a country that still had segregated public facilities and often looked at 'foreigners' with suspicion. I recall his writing about his days on the tour bus heading from one gig to another, how he would hang out with his Black musician friends, even when promoters weren't too thrilled about that.' Marrying Lucy Arnaz met Lucille Ball on the set of a 1940 film, 'Too Many Girls,' in which they both had roles. The New York-born redhead and the Cuban Miami music maverick wed that year. 'Today, this kind of marriage in Miami is commonplace. It was such a precursor of what was to come in this community,' Miami filmmaker Joe Cardona said in a 2001 interview with the Herald on the 50th anniversary of 'I Love Lucy.' 'To Cubans in South Florida, this was kind of like looking into a crystal ball,' Cardona said. 'Here was a show that actually featured somebody who sounded like my father. Somebody who looked like my uncle. Somebody my brother could grow up to be,' wrote former Herald columnist Ana Veciana Suarez in 2001. Within a decade of their marriage, the world would come to consider the Ball-Arnaz couple family, a relationship that outlasted their marriage, their professional union, Arnaz's post 'Lucy' career, and their lives. Arnaz died of lung cancer at age 69 in 1986. Smoking Purdum recounts in his book, 'Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television,' how, upon arrival from Cuba by ferryboat to Key West in the early 1930s, father and teenage son were driven to their first home in Miami. 'On the bus ride to Miami, the mayor made a gesture that implied recognition of how fast Desi had grown up since they'd last met: He offered his son a cigarette,' Purdum wrote. Arnaz, like so many actors of the time, smoked on camera. His habit formed the basis for a sketch on the 1976 'Saturday Night Live' episode he hosted. Arnaz played an acupuncturist treating an ailing patient portrayed by John Belushi. But not 'Chinese acupuncture with needles' Arnaz warns the wary Belushi. 'Cuban acupuncture, with cigars.' When Arnaz died at his California home, after visits from his family, including ex-wife Ball, and with their daughter Lucie at his bedside, the Miami Herald's obituary quoted the musician-actor's doctor. 'He died of lung cancer. It was from smoking those Cuban cigars — that's the truth.' Remembering 'Ricky' Actress and singer Lucie Arnaz said of her father's lifelong work ethic in a 2006 interview: 'He had a lot of moxie and integrity because he had to keep on going. He had to start over, and he had to build everything again. He was fearless.' Ball, in a 1983 interview with Ladies Home Journal six years before she died in 1989 at 77 after heart surgery, said of her ex-husband: Desi 'was much smarter than anyone thought. He was a great showman, a great businessman, a fantastic entrepreneur, and I loved watching the executives finding that out.' In his 1976 autobiography, 'A Book,' that he plugged on 'SNL,' Arnaz recalled his 'great days in Miami Beach.' Basketball. Hot dogs. Beach picnics. On one of his last visits to Miami in 1982, to take his crown as king of the first Carnaval Miami, he told Herald reporters, 'I am returning to my first place — Miami. I started here.' If you go What: An Evening with Todd S. Purdum and moderator Carlos Frias discussing Purdum's book, 'Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television.' When: 7 p.m. Saturday, June 21. Where: Books & Books, 265 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables. Cost: Free. You can buy the book at the event. Or buy tickets in advance and get one copy of the book for $29.99 plus tax.
New Statesman
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
Thought experiment 12: The Teletransporter
Illustration by Marie Montocchio / Ikon Images Star Trek fans can't agree. How does the Enterprise's transporter work? When Captain Kirk beams down to planet Omega IV, have the molecules in his body been disassembled and reassembled? Or has the machine scanned him and made a physical copy? The version of this thought experiment imagined by Derek Parfit (see Thought Experiment 11: The Harmless Torturer) has no such ambiguity. It is roughly as follows. I enter a machine that scans my brain and body, then sends instructions at the speed of light to another machine on Mars. This second machine then creates an exact replica. All my memories are the same. 'Even the cut on my upper lip, from this morning's shave, is still there.' Meanwhile, my body back on Earth is destroyed. I have made this trip, back and forth to Mars, many times. But I'm told that a technological advance allows a blueprint to be made without the source body being destroyed. The machine attendant tells me that I will be able to talk to myself on Mars. Wow! Parfit goes on: 'Wait a minute,' I reply, 'If I'm here I can't also be on Mars.' Someone politely coughs, a white-coated man who asks to speak to me in private. We go to his office, where he tells me to sit down… Then he says: 'I'm afraid we're having problems with the New Scanner. It records your blueprint just as accurately, as you will see when you talk to yourself on Mars. But it seems to be damaging the cardiac systems which it scans. Judging from the results so far, though you will be quite healthy on Mars, here on Earth you must expect cardiac failure within the next few days.' What should be my reaction? Personal identity, the question of what it is that makes me today the same person I was when I was ten and (here's hoping) when I'm 90, has preoccupied philosophers for millennia. In Greek mythology, the Ship of Theseus decayed, and in time one plank was replaced by another, until there was no single plank left from the original. Was it still the same ship? In the 17th century John Locke imagined that the souls of a prince and cobbler were exchanged along with their memories. Identity, according to Locke, tracked memory. The prince was now in the cobbler's body. Parfit made a number of claims about what kinds of beings we are. Unlike Locke, he didn't believe in souls; he thought our existence just involves our brains and our bodies. He also saw identity as not always being fixed or unitary. If my brain was divided into its two hemispheres and each half transplanted into a different body, it would be arbitrary to say that one of these two was really me. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe In any case, what mattered was not identity, but psychological connectedness – a similarity between two distinct mental states. So rather than ask whether a younger or older person is identical to me, we're better off asking how closely they're psychologically connected to me – whether there are overlapping memories, thoughts, desires, character traits and so on. This is usually a matter of degree. It is not all or nothing. My replica on Mars, after teletransportation, starts off psychologically identical to me, with the same thoughts, desires and memories. According to Parfit, I should treat news of my impending death on Earth with relative indifference. The fact that my replica is made of different physical stuff is an almost trivial detail. If Parfit is right that there is no deep fact (like a soul) that makes me 'me', there are some radical implications. The distance – psychological and ethical – that I once believed separated me from other people, narrows. Conversely, the distance between me and my past and future selves widens. A 20-year-old might be better off blowing any spare cash on treats today, rather than putting it towards a pension plan for their only loosely connected 65-year-old self. And we might now hold a 65-year-old less responsible for a crime committed when they were 20 and which they can only dimly recall. The Parfitian view of personal identity has a bearing on numerous other issues. Think of living wills – the instructions people set out for their future care in the event that they become incapacitated. Is it right that we can legally fix healthcare decisions on a future self, for a time when this future self is unable to make a decision? Although some people find Parfit's conclusions about personal identity depressing, he himself found them uplifting. In a famous passage he wrote: When I believed that my existence was a further fact, I seemed imprisoned in myself. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others. Next time: The Comet That Destroys Earth After Our Death [See also: Ideas for Keir] Related This article appears in the 18 Jun 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Warlord
