Ok, I was already pretty hyped up for Skyrim even without seeing a second of gameplay video. That is just how big a fan of the Elder Scrolls rpg series I am. To say that I have spent close to near 3000+ hours playing the four games in this series would be an understatement. Yes, that does sound quite pathetic, but I don’t care because it’s awesome in my own personal world how much I’ve played this series.
This new trailer is not just voice-over with a cavern wall carving being panned around by the virtual camera. This new trailer I would consider Skyrim‘s first official cinematic trailer but also one that includes gameplay footage. Gameplay footage which shows off Bethesda’s latest game engine, Creation Engine, which has replaced the Gamebryo Engine that the studio used for Morrowind, Oblivion and the last two Fallout games. While the gameplay footage was all about action it does give some hints about changes to the faces and figures of the NPCs. Gamebryo was ahead of its time in 2001 when Morrowind came out but now it’s antiquated so I’m glad Bethesda listened to the pleas of fans to come up with a new and more advanced game engine.
I like the sound of the theme for the game which combines and remixes the themes from both Morrowind and Oblivion but with a nice male chorus doing something akin to a Norse battle-chant. Music composer Jeremy Soule will return to compose the music for Skyrim and that alone means I shall be acquiring the soundtrack, if and when, Bethesda releases the CD.
The game is set for a 11.11.11 release and I shall be one of the brave few who will pre-order the most expensive edition of this game because it deserves it.
I first found out about this little cult film starring the very awesome Christopher Walken around 1993 or so when I was at the local Waldenbooks (yes there used to be bookstores not named Barnes & Noble or Borders back in the day) looking at the latest issue of Fangoria. Inside the magazine they were doing a brief feature on an upcoming horror film tentatively called God’s Army. All I saw was that it was to star Christopher Walken and it had gore and angels in it. That alone peaked my interest and I was looking forward to seeing it in the theaters. Almost two years passed and nothing about it was ever heard again until I visited the video rental place near my house and saw a VHS tape (yeah, those big videocassette thingies) with the title of The Prophecy and starring Christopher Walken.
This was the film I was so hyped to seeing in the theaters. The title had changed from it’s earlier (and much cooler) one of God’s Army. It would seem that it’s film distributor had little to no faith in the box-office potential of the film and just delayed it’s release to the point that when it did come out no one knew about it barely anyone saw it. It was a real damn shame since filmmaker Gregory Widen made such a good film that was able to mash-up horror, angels and a detective story all in one without creating a mess of things.
The Prophecy was about the war in heaven we were never taught about in Sunday school. We all know about the war in heaven where Lucifer and the rebel angels who followed him tried to overthrow God. That didn’t go over so well for Lucifer and he and his band of fallen angels were cast out into Hell by God and his right-hand man the Archangel Michael. This film talks about the second war in heaven soon thereafter which no one outside those who wrote little-known apocryphal texts about it (and being apocryphal they never were included in the Bible). This war now had a new group of angels led by the Archangel Gabriel rebelling against God for choosing humans (talking monkeys as these new rebels called them) above all living creatures including the angels themselves for God’s love. This war was now in a state of stalemate after countless millenia, but a prophecy about a soul so dark and evil was to be the tipping point for either side. This particular soul was to be found on Earth and whoever acquires it would break the stalemate and finally bring this second war to an end.
With this in mind we have Walken as the Archangel Gabriel coming down to Earth to look for this soul so he can finally win the war for his side (which also means the end of mankind). It’s the angel Simon (played by Eric Stoltz) who comes down to stop him from getting this soul or, at the very least, hide it from Gabriel. With these two factions of angels vying to acquire this soul we have a Detective Thomas Daggett smack in the middle of the case investigating all the weird happenings and deaths surrounding the battle between these two factions. The dead bodies of angels begin to appear on morgue slabs looking like eyeless, hermaphroditic specimens and angelic script found in crime scenes brings Daggett back to his time studying to be a priest before images of angels warring amongst themselves breaks him down and he quits the seminary to become a cop instead.
It would come down to these three factions racing against time to acquire this dark soul.
The film is not as gory as it’s feature in Fangoria made it out to be, but it is quite violent and bloody that I understand why it got the horror label attached to it. It’s more a dark fantasy thriller more than horror. It’s rare in today’s film that we see angels portrayed as the bloodthirsty beings that the really are. The film even points out this oft-ignored detail of God’s messengers. Angels are always the ones God sends to punish or send a very serious message to his chosen beings that is Man. The Prophecy shows this aspect of angels in full light and how their attitudes about humanity might lead some of them to hate God for raising Man above even them.
Christopher Walker does a great job conveying Gabriel’s hate and contempt for humans. His Gabriel is like one of those pundits always on tv (both liberal and consevative) who are so into their sides’ message that they never see the other side as anything but the enemy. One could almost say that Walken’s Gabriel is like then apocalypse-hungry version of Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann in one body. This is not to say that Walken goes over-the-top with his performance. In fact, he’s quite subdued in how he uses those many tics and voice mannerisms a whole cottage industry has grown around in.
Walken’s portrayal of Gabriel infuses what could’ve become a one-note villain with lots of layers and complexities that the rest of the cast were able to play off from. His character would be terrifying one moment then smoothly switch over to being funny and charming then back to terror. It’s due to his great performance that the other cast members like Stoltz as the weary, loyal angel Simon and Koteas as the fallen religious cop Daggett were able to bring their own performance to another level. This is quite a feat since the dialogue in the film was a mixed bag of horror cliches and interesting Biblical-speak about secret wars, apocryphal books and prophecies. The film even has a nice appearance of the first fallen angel himself and none other than Viggo Mortensen plays Lucifer.
The Prophecy does have a feeling that it was always one misstep away from becoming an awful film. This had happened with 2010’s Legion and did that film about angels and the apocalypse turn out to be a huge steaming pile of shit-turd. But while Dimension Film saw the film fall over on the side of bad for myself and those who have come to admire and love this cult classic the film stayed balance between good and bad. Widen’s film never went over to the side of becoming a truly great film, but it also never fell on the side that Legion ended up on. What Prophecy ended up becoming was a film that was almost grindhouse in nature, but even then it still looked too good with too many good performances to be given that label. The fact that it contains one of Christopher Walken’s best performances speaks well of a film that many critics during it’s early days had dismissed as just another bad horror film.
In the end, this film became just one of the many little-gems that got lost in film studio money politics. I definitely would recommend this cult film to people who haven’t seen it, but I would tell them to stop at just this film and not even go near the four sequels which came after it.
With all the talk of Natalie Portman as the front-runner to win Best Actress in this upcoming Oscars (hope I didn’t just jinx her chances) for her role as Nina in Aronofsky’s Black Swan it would seem she has two films to follow her critically-acclaimed performance. One just came out this weekend and not what many of her fans would consider as worthy of her talents after what she did in Black Swan.
I am talking about the romantic-comedy No Strings Attached where she is paired up with one Ashton Kutcher. To say that critics didn’t like this film would be an understatement. The fact that it was the number one film during it’s first weekend release just boggles the mind.
The other film she has coming out soon after Black Swan if the fantasy comedy directed by the guy who made the hilarious Pineapple Express (David Gordon Green) and stars Danny McBride, James Franco, Zooey Deschanel and Justin Theroux. The film is called Your Highness and Portman plays the warrior Isabel and in the trailer shows that she can dish it out when it’s time to be fightin’ ’round the world.
Though I’m sure that one thing which sold this fantasy comedy to her male fans (probably quite a bit of her female fans as well) is the bit where she’s about to go bathe in the river. That and her wearing period style corset and such. Well, just go watch the trailer and decide for yourself.
Ok, first we get the debut trailer for Mass Effect 3 which will consume my life and time when it comes out. Now I find out that the one game series which has also consumed my life and time in the past is also coming out around the same time as the aforementioned title.
What do I speak of?
I speak of the game which, in my very honestful and truthiness opinion, is the Lord of the Rings of fantasy gaming rpgs. It is The Elder Scrolls series and this game marks the 5th entry in the series which will followed other entries in the franchise like Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion. This franchise has spanned over a decade in gaming history and I expect nothing less than a new game from this series eating up close to 1000 hours of my life before I finally stop playing it to try something else.
And just like it sci-fi epic cousin in the Mass Effect series it is I who will be savior of the realms and kingdoms from whence this fantasy franchise lives in. While I may not be saving the galaxy it’s still no easy feat to save a fantasy kingdom full of lovely maidens and grateful millions.
Sidenote: Lisa Marie must be wondering what the hell I’m talking about with these last two blog entries.
In the winter of 2009, BioWare released a new rpg franchise to bookend their massively successful and critically-acclaimed scifi-rpg series Mass Effect. This new franchise was to be fantasy-based and would take the same deep and complex storytelling paired with morality choices that all past BioWare rpgs were well-known for. The game was Dragon Age: Origins and it did quite well that the company quickly began on creating the follow-up.
The game was a success, but not without some gripes from critics and players alike. While overall the game delivered on the experience BioWare promised it had some gameplay and visual failings which kept the game from becoming one of the great ones in 2009. The combat mechanics was not as intuitive as most gamers were used to. It played more like early BioWare games where commands for types of attacks were given but players had no control on how the attack were performed. There was also some major graphical issues in the game even on some high-end gaming pcs which ran the PC version.
Despite these flaws the game did entertain and gain quite a following. It’s no wonder that BioWare is ready to release the sequel, Dragon Age 2, a little over a year since the first game. This sequel will have BioWare addressing the very flaws gamers had with the first game. The combat will be more geared more like an action rpg with a streamlined control system. The company has stated that the look of the game will surpass that of the original now that programmers have had a better look at the PS3 and Xbox 360 systems. The game will also have a storyline which will span 10-years with the player’s character affecting how the world in the game changes depending on actions and decision played throughout.
Like its scifi brethren, Dragon Age 2 will use players’ saved completed games of the first title to tool and alter this sequel for that particular gamer. There’s one major change to the gameplay which may make some players unhappy. A player will not be able to choose their character’s race class. No more dwarf or elf characters. This sequel is strictly a human affair.
Until more videos of actual gameplay come out these CG-animated trailers will have to whet the appetites of rpg gamers everywhere.
Still recovering from the SF Giants winning the 2010 World Series so my review of the pilot episode of The Walking Dead is still in need of completion. To show that I haven’t been slacking off on my postings (Lisa Marie’s really been on a posting tear these past couple days. So proud of her.) I decided that what better stopgap until the review is up than to post the newly released 2nd trailer for Zack Snyder’s upcoming fantasy film, Sucker Punch, that seems to be a who’s who of the industry’s hottest young actresses. It has Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung and (one of Lisa Marie’s favorites) Jena Malone. To help chaperone this quintet of hotness are the mature stylings of Carla Gugino and Scott Glenn.
This latest trailer gives a bit more of the narrative to Sucker Punch, but even with that the visuals may be what brings in the audience. Snyder looks to be the king of the hyperstylized visuals in Hollywood today. Whether that translates into a well-made product is still being debated, but one can never accuse Snyder of not having the eye for the spectacular.
The trailer shows more action with dragons, anime-style mecha, samurai, Nazis and zombies. Interestingly enough the trailer skimps on the Moulin Rouge-type sequence the Comic-Con trailer showed. I’m sure those scenes will be in the final film, but Legendary Pictures look to be using the stylized action to sell the flick. I’m for it either way. If sex doesn’t sell then cool violence does in Hollywood.
I’m wondering how much Legendary Pictures ended up paying Led Zeppelin to use “When the Levee Breaks” to score this trailer. It has to be some major coinage which tells me that the studio has high-expectations about this film succeeding and raking in even more coinage.
Scott Stewart’s film about the Biblical Apocalypse was one film that I was very hyped to see in the first weeks of 2010. I had heard some very good buzz about it when a red band sizzle reel was shown in at 2009 San Diego Comic-Con. This was Stewart’s first major work (he had made a smaller film in 2000 called What We Talk About When We Talk About Love) and with his background in the special effects industry I thought that this film of his would at least be a feast for the eyes. I knew going in what to expect from something about God, Angels, the Apocalypse and uneding amounts of guns and ammo. So, it was with a profound disappointment when I finally saw Legion and, despite my low expectations, was roundly disappointed with everything about it.
Legion is about God deciding that he’s had enough of humanity’s bullshit and shenanigans (a term I would put on this film) and turned his angelic hosts loose upon the world to start things new. This was God’s version of shaking the Etch-a-Sketch that is the world. He has his two favorite Archangels in Michael and Gabriel leading the vanguard of this Apocalypse with Michael tasked with making sure a baby doesn’t get born before the divine enema has been completed. Well, Michael being the introspective sone decides that he still has faith in humanity and refuses to do God’s bidding. We see Michael go through removing his wings (which also unlocks the very BDSM God collar all the angels wear) then find a huge cache of weapons inside a toy company warehouse. Seems removing the wings makes him human and minus all the cool angelic powers. He says something about the Apocalypse having started then makes off towards Bethle…I mean the diner out in the Nevada desert to protect the prophesized baby who will save humanity.
Yeah, the premise for Legion sounds awesome on paper. Militant angels led by badass Archangels like Gabriel about to go “Terminator” on mankind. The story itself was like a mish-mash of some of the best cult fantasy/horror of the past. There’s some of the cool Christopher Walken film Prophecy in the plot and, of course, one cannot but see some parallels with Cameron’s Terminator. Plus, we have a humanized Archangel Michael with guns and guns and guns to battle his former brethren with his coterie of human sidekicks to help out. The trailer for this was very cool and full of action. A trailer which pretty much had all the cool parts in this film. One can watch the trailer and actually enjoy Legion more than when they watch the film itself.
For a filmmaker with a special effects background the film looked pretty lifeless with action sequences that lacked any sort of memorable action. The dialogue wasn’t awful, but everyone’s performance made it sound worse than it really was. Even Bettany in the lead role of Michael looked tired and bored with his role (a sign the film was going downhill and downhill fast). The possessed humans who made up the bulk of the opposing force against the good guys were uninteresting with the exception of Doug Jones’ “Ice Cream Man” character shown in the trailer. A scene the trailer pretty much showed almost in its entirety. That character was on the screen for less than two minutes then gone.
I actually think that people should just watch the trailer for Legion then pop into their dvd player Prophecy and Terminator. Doing that will pretty much give them the whole story of Legion and have a kick-ass time doing so. This was a film that looked good to great on paper, but once they actually started writing the script and started filming went down the septic tank. It’s films like these that makes one shout “shenanigans” at all those involved in its making. I think Kyle Broflowski would agree with me.
It’s been awhile since I picked a film for the Grindhouse of the Day feature. For this go-round I will go into the little-known grindhouse fantasy subgenre.
Grindhouse flicks seem to always deal with horror, blaxploitation, Italian murder mysteries and scifi, but the fantasy subgenre has always been kept from the conversation. This is a shame since there’s been some very good (in grindhouse terms) flicks in the fantasy genre that could qualify as grindhouse. I would especially point out the ones made after the release of the very popular Conan the Barbarian. The one I chose is from that grindhouse master of the 1980’s: Albert Pyun. I speak of his 1982 sword and fantasy flick, The Sword and the Sorcerer.
The film definitely riffs-off of the Schwarzenegger-Milius fantasy epic. We have a kingdom conquered and destroyed by an evil tyrant who uses black-armored soldiers in addition to getting the help of an undead sorcerer. This time around the Conan-archetype is played by 80’s TV star Lee Horsley who does a valaint effort to affect a Shakespearean speech pattern (for some reason when people think fantasy they instantly try to speak like they were in a Shakespearean production). Baddie icon Richard Lynch plays the evil tyrant and he definitely looked like he was having the time of his life in the film despite the corny dialogue. There’s an abundance of graphic violence, nudity and magic spells (done in early 80’s heavy metal effects).
One thing this flick does have which made it a cult classic for fans of the fantasy genre is the sword in the title. The main character of Talon wielded a three-bladed sword. Let me repeat that: A THREE-BLADED SWORD. The sword wasn’t just sporting three blade but the wielder has the ability to shoot two of the blades at someone. Definitely puts to shame those sissy Spetnaz ballistic knives. Arnold may have had an Atlantean-forged blade in Conan the Barbarian, but Lee Horsley definitely outsworded him in his flick.
Another thing about this flick which makes it a favorite of mine is the poster art created for it. The producers of the film did one other thing right outside of populating the film with a kick-ass sword, much nudity and violence. I talk of the Frank Frazetta painted posters done up for the flick. More than one version were done depending on the region. The one above which was the original was the best and the film definitely lives up to what Frazetta painted.
While I wasn’t able to attend San Diego Comic-Con 2010 I did try to follow it on-line as much as possible. From what I read through Twitter updates, film blog sites and everything in-between it looks like one of the highlights of the Con was Zack Snyder’s follow-up to Watchmen. His “Alive in Wonderland with machine guns” has been gaining major league hype and buzz since more details were released and shown during it’s panel.
An earlier posting I made showed the beautiful painted character posters for the cast of Sucker Punch. This follow-up post will now show the first trailer for this film which is set for a March 25, 2011 release. From what I could see in the trailer it looks like Snyder hasn’t lost his ability to put on film some gorgeous looking set-pieces. This is a man who definitely has a flair and talent for visuals. The question now (which the trailer didn’t answer in any way) is whether Sucker Punch can match it’s amazing visuals with a worthwhile story.
This film is Snyder’s first project not based on an adapted source. Maybe we’ll see his storytelling skills blossom with Sucker Punch.
Sad news for Tolkien fans worldwide as Guillermo Del Toro has announced that he will be leaving the planned two-part film project to adapt J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic novel, The Hobbit. As his announcement on TheOneRing.Net explains the many delays to the start of the project has made his role as director to the two films untenable. He had signed up to spend three years in New Zealand to do the films and has even moved his family to have them closer to him during the process, but the constant delays to getting an official start date would mean he would need to spend double the time he had originally signed up for.
These delays have made him put on the backburner his own film projects which seem very close and dear to him. He still has to finish off his Spanish Civil War Trilogy (The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth being the first two). There’s also his wish to do a third Hellboy film (the second film setting up what could be an epic closing to the franchise). Then there’s his dream project to bring to the big-screen a film adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s novella, At the Mountains of Madness.
With Del Toro now gone as headliner for the two Hobbit films there’s surely going to be new rumors about who shall replace him. There was major scuttlebutt that Sam Raimi was in the running in the beginning before Del Toro signed on. I wouldn’t be surprised if Raimi’s name came up once again. He definitely has free time now that he’s off the Spider-Man franchise. Will Jackson do another “out of left field” decision and tap Blomkamp to take over for Del Toro. I think that’s a brave move if it happens, but also one that could backfire and stunt Blomkamp’s career. He’s already been part of plans to adapt a major franchise only to have it taken away from him.
In the end, it looks like The Hobbit may just end up not being made or, at the very least, not make a 2012 release date many insiders have set it two-part film for.
Through the Shattered Lens 