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Yes, aside from that terrible title, it’s the sort of twist you expected: Star Trek reboot-sequel Into Darkness is not anywhere near as good as its predecessor, despite the ample blue lens flare. Heck, it’s not even as good as Iron Man 3, and you don’t need a mega-nerd to poke black-hole-sized holes in the script—even a casual viewer like yours truly came away fuming—and here’s a list of why (serious spoilers follow).

Well, any trailer that opens with narration by Sam Shepard whilst he tends to a boat, is aces in my book. And with the first trailer for August: Osage County, The Weinstein Company gives us the premiere look into the Weston family after a crisis brings them back to the Midwest house they grew up in.

As the English master of violent sexual obsession and radical nonlinear storytelling, director Nicolas Roeg has been the man behind some of my absolute favorite films. His early features are a mix of feverish aesthetics and editing with psychologically potent narratives that spin on their own axis of pleasure and pain. Although best known for his sci-fi mind-bender The Man Who Fell to Earth, it was Performance—which he shot as well as co-directed—that has become one of those films that feels like a part of heart, I could be totally content having it play on loop forever across my bedroom wall. And then there's his erotic psychodrama Bad Timing, which plays into just about every one of my cinematic fetishes and really made me fall head over heels for Roeg's unqiue style. 

I read the titular essay in Nora Ephron's I Feel Bad About My Neck this morning on the way to work, and I can't stop thinking about it now that I have seen the image of Benedict Cumberbatch in that futuristic turtleneck from Star Trek Into Darkness. What's he hiding under there? Scales? Gills? Ray guns? Or is it perhaps one of the ailments Ephron writes about in her essay: "There are chicken necks. There are turkey gobbler necks. There are elephant necks. There are necks with wattles and necks with creases that are on the verge of becoming wattles. There are scrawny necks and fat necks, loose necks, crepey necks, banded necks, wrinkled necks, stringy necks, saggy necks, flabby necks, mottled necks." Whichever it is, I feel really bad about it.

In 1952 English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist Alan Turing was arrested during a police investigation about a robbery in his own home. Turing’s sexuality was revealed in police’s process, submitting him to arrest for gross indecency. He was then prosecuted for being a homosexual, choosing chemical castration over prison. The process proved more than harrowing for the genius, and in June of 1954, Turing committed suicide by eating a cyanide-laced apple. Snow White had always been his favorite fairy tale.

Benedict Cumberbatch can do no wrong. The strangely beautiful and fiercely talent Englishman first made us fall into love with him in the BBC version of Sherlock last year, and in the coming months we'll see his villainous turn in Star Trek. But it's DreamWorks that's currently prepping their WikiLeaks movie with Breaking Dawn director Bill Condon leading the picture. Now titled The Fifth Estate the film is currently in production with Cumberbatch starring as Julian Assange and Daniel Bruhl as WikiLeaks co-founder Daniel Domscheit-Berg. The Fifth Estate, based on the books Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website and WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy with a script from Josh Singer of The West Wing, looks to be shaping up to Sorkin-esque proportions.

Benedict Cumberbatch from Sherlock always seemed to me to be a cuddly, if bony, little nerd. Well. Trust me. When he's mashed up with a teddy bear, he'll scare the shit out of you.

I think most people who know me might be surprised that I'm pretty stoked for the new Star Trek movie. I loved the last one unexpectedly! I have a general distrust of anything science fiction or, as some might say, "fun," but I pretty much kicked back and took it all in. I have to also give J.J. Abrams credit for making it all about time travel, because five minutes in I was like, "Welp, I won't understand what the hell is going on anyway, might as well just relax and let this thing do what it needs to do." Also: Zachary Quinto's eyebrows. Can't resist 'em. Anyway, Benedict Cumberbatch is the villain in Star Trek Into Darkness, and he even narrates the first teaser trailer, which you can take a look at after the jump.