Saturday, November 26, 2011

'Star Trek: Enterprise' Season Two (2002)

Starring Scott Bakula, Jolene Blalock and Connor Trinneer
Created by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga
Based on 'Star Trek' created by Gene Roddenberry

At the end of Season One, Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) was transported to the 29th century by temporal agent Daniels (Matt Winston), but discovered that his absence from history has led to the destruction of the future.  Earth lies in ruins, and Daniels no longer has access to the proper technology to send Archer back to his own time and repair history.  Meanwhile, the Sulban Cabal led by Silik (John Fleck) have captured the Enterprise and torture Sub-Commander T'Pol (Jolene Blalock) to learn Archer's location, not believing that he'd been whisked away to the future.

The rest of the Enterprise crew, Chief Engineer Tucker (Connor Trinneer), Lt. Reed (Dominic Keating), Ensign Mayweather (Anthony Montgomery), Ensign Sato (Linda Park) and Doctor Phlox (John Billingsley) concoct a plan to retake the Enterprise from the Suliban.  In the future, Archer and Daniels come up with an equally desperate plan to figure out how to send Archer back through time.

Throughout the rest of the season, the Enterprise crew will get back to their original mission, exploring strange new worlds and meeting new life forms.  They'll make a few new friends, but they'll also encounter new enemies including the mysterious Romulans, and run afoul once more of the violent Klingon Empire.

At the end of the season, Earth suffers a terrible tragedy: an alien probe appears in orbit and fires an incredible weapon that cuts a swath of destruction from Florida to South America, killing some seven million humans.  Archer and the Enterprise crew receive word that a race of beings known as the Xindi are behind the attack, and the Enterprise is ordered to go into a dangerous region of space known as the Expanse in order to find the Xindi and stop them from destroying Earth.  But before he can save Earth, Archer has to deal with the price on his head from the Klingon Empire, and a Klingon captain called Duras who will stop at nothing to regain his honor.

"The Sandlot" (1993)

Starring Tom Guiry, Mike Vitar and Patrick Renna
Written by David M. Evans and Robert Gunter
Directed by David M. Evans
Rated PG - Mild language, peril
Running Time: 101 Minutes
Trailer

Some movies you just remember, y'know?  You see them when you're young and for whatever reason they stick with you.  They might not be the greatest movies ever made, didn't win any awards, but for whatever reason they make their way into the consciousness of a generation.  "The Sandlot," it turns out, is one of those movies.

Scotty Smalls (Tom Guiry) is the new kid in town, just moved to the valley in the summer of 1962.  Hoping to make friends, he follows a group of neighborhood boys to an old, run-down baseball diamond they call the Sandlot.  Unfortunately for Smalls, he actually has no idea how to play baseball, and the others make fun of him.  But one boy, Benny Rodriguez (Mike Vitar) teaches him to catch and throw and he is soon welcomed into the group.

Over the course of the summer, Benny, Smalls, and the others including hefty tough-guy Ham (Patrick Renna), nerdy Squints (Chauncey Lombardi), Yeah-Yeah (Marty York), DeNunez (Brandon Adams), brothers Timmy and Tommy-Repeat (Victor DiMattia and Shane Obedzinski) get into a number of different adventures.  They go to a carnival chewing tobacco and end up throwing up all over a fast ride and the other occupants.  They play a pickup game against another local team and crush them - thoroughly.  They get kicked out of the municipal swimming pool when Squints takes his crush on the lifeguard Wendy Peffercorn (Marley Shelton) too far.

But the biggest adventure of them all, the one that will change their lives, comes when Smalls steals a ball signed by Babe Ruth (Art LaFleur) and ends up knocking it over a fence... a fence that separates the Sandlot from the home of mean old Mr. Mertle (James Earl Jones) and his vicious guard dog, The Beast. The ball belongs to Smalls' step-father Bill (Denis Leary), and is, of course, considerably valuable.  Benny, Smalls and the Sandlot gang must risk their lives to get back the ball before Bill returns from his business trip in Chicago and grounds Smalls for-ev-verrr...