As Promised
A more positive post. Enjoy:And On...And On...
Sorry for once again falling behind on my post alerts. I will get around to reading them, but I've been kinda busy and kinda unwell. I had a cold last week that I thought I was over, but it came back with a vengence on Tuesday.
Now my throat is killing me! I've been up since about 3:30 because of it, killing time on Prince of Persia. Speaking of which, get it; 'tis greatness. There have been a lot of complaints from people because of the ease of the game and the inability to die. Yes, it's easy, if you're just running through it to get to the ending. The challenge is in seeing everything and collecting everything. The game itself might only be about 8 hours long, but there are so many 'light seeds' to find (1,001) and so much fun to be had figuring out how to get the more elaborately-placed little feckers that you can get a good few hours more out of it.
On the subject of gaming, I also recently played through the new Tomb Raider. It's not bad but, despite there being a host of new elements, the last two were better. I wrote a full review here.
Oh yeah, and there's this one...
Wires Are For Wimps
Now excuse me while I find a rag to clean the drool from my keyboard...
Underworld 3
Yet another franchise takes a swing at the difficult 3rd film. In this age of franchise trilogies, the format seems to go one of two ways. More often than not, the first film is a breath of fresh air; original, somewhat intelligent and successful enough to have studios and audiences hankering for more. Then things tend to get a little complicated. Either the second film will improve on everything set out in the first, only for the series to fall flat in the third (see Spider-Man and X-Men), or the second will try too hard to improve everything from the first, leaving the third the difficult task of picking up the pieces (see Pirates of the Caribbean and The Matrix).Time certainly seems to be a factor in this. With the former examples, each film was evenly spaced out and treated as a stand-alone project, resulting in due care and attention being paid to the second, and ideas running sadly thin by the time they got around to the third. With the latter, the second and third films were made as one long project, meaning the focus got lost, the second is a mess, and there's barely enough time to right those mistakes in the third.
Underworld, however, is an odd one. The first film didn't enjoy the kind of critical and commercial success of the aforementioned films, but did just enough to warrant a sequel, which I personally thought was superior in every way to the first. When I read that it was infact planned as a trilogy from the start, with one of the films telling the back-story to the whole war, I struggled to see how that could work.
Nevertheless, this is promising...
JCVD
......
More to Watch
I Demand to Know Why Nobody Told Me of This!
This Really Does Look Exceedingly Cool
Let the Right One In
Staying True to Source
It's often difficult for game-to-film adaptations. Certain things have to be done to placate the fans and certain sacrifices have to be made to make a a good film.We're still waiting for someone to strike the right balance, but some decent efforts have been seen. In Tomb Raider, it was casting the perfect actress for the job (it was just a shame the story was so iffy). In Doom, it was including a full action-sequence shot in first-person perspective (it was just a shame the story was so iffy). In Hitman, it was some beautifully constructed action set-pieces (it was just a shame the story was so iffy).
The apparent supernatural bent being put on Max Payne is looking a bit iffy, but in terms of nice touches, this one is nice:
I particularly like the line, "I knew the sun would come up tomorrow, and I knew I would be alone to see it."
I Somehow Missed This
And I'm somewhat relieved:Time To Sharpen Those Claws
Yes, I know; the quality sucks and the cheering is annoying, but this looks no less cool:Well, it looks better than prior sequels...
...but then, that's not saying much:Was Surprised to See This
Who'd have thunk?
And How Do You Fight Your Demons?
I like it 'cause it's silly :D
Immortal
Earth, 2095. A pyramid appears above New York and, from it, emerges Horus, Egyptian god of the sky, released from an eternal slumber to walk the Earth for seven days; time aims to use to mate with a rare woman who can bare a god's child.Where to begin...?
This film is weird. The setting reminds me a lot of The Fifth Element with a starker colour palette. Cars float around the city, or ride around on rails. The high-rise streets are populated with a mix of humans, aliens and mutants. A lot of the designs for both vehicles and buildings have an art-deco look. It's certainly a feast for the eyes.
As is the lead, Jill; a tall, slim, white-skinned, blue 'haired' woman who can read minds, shoot people with the palm of her hand and permanently dye human skin blue with her tears.
With the exception of Jill - played by French actress Linda Hardy adopting a very convincing non-European accent - and one or two others in elaborate costume, the whole non-human cast is rendered in CGI. It seems very strange at first, given these characters are all humanoid and look as close to human as it was possible to get with CGI four years ago, but it fits with the overall odd look of the film. Because everything is coloured so starkly, and the whole thing looks so surreal anyway, the CGI characters don't look as out of place as they might've done in a more straight-forward or colourful sci-fi.
Immortal is a strange film with a convoluted plot and bizarre aesthetic, but it's captivating, atmospheric and immensely original.
Who Watches the Watchmen?
On the strength of the novel, I'm going to hazard a guess at 'lots of people'.Having finally finished the book, I can see from the trailer that many key scenes have been faithfully reconstructed, but I still wonder at how certain elements will be handled by Zak Snyder. For example, big chunks of back-story and characterisation are handled by long prose pieces - taking the form of official reports, newspaper columns, novel extracts and press interviews - interspersed throughout the novel. The story can probably be told without them, but if the writers and director are keen to remain faithful to source, then they will have to be at least alluded to in some way.
There is also something quite radical - dare I say, silly - about the maniacal scheme behind the main plot-arch. How that will translate on screen, and how audiences will react to it - especially those who haven’t read the novel - I don’t know.
Snyder and co. certainly have some tough decisions to make. However, he did bring us the excellent 300 so, whatever the result, I’ve no doubt it will be entertaining…
Ledger's Legacy
Terrry Gilliam was on the news this morning talking about the film he was making with Heath Ledger.He said he's had to recast the part with three actors.
And not just any three: Johnny Depp, Collin Farrel and Jude Law!
Why does the man have to die before we find out how good he really was?
The Night is Darkest Before the Dawn
And it seems, when that dawn is 30 days away, the night is very dark!Yes, another day, another comic-book adaptation; this time, 30 Days of Night. Josh Hartnet (who I've, till now, hated in everything he's been in except Black Hawk Down) is the sheriff of a sleepy little town in the far, frozen north that goes 30 days without sunshine. One dusk, a bunch of particularly vicious vampires roll into town and make a particularly big mess of the locals.
Continuing with Hollywood's new-found love of holding no barrs, the story-telling is kept very minimalist in favour of showing the gruesome vamps doing gruesome stuff and looking decidedly gruesome (black eyes, pale skin, long, sharp nails and a full set of very sharp teeth, covered in blood both fresh and stale throughout).
If anything, the story-telling is a little too minimalist. For example, we're never told how a nine year-old girl manages to survive almost a month in a frozen town all on her lonesome, with nothing but hungry monsters for company. Though I appreciate the idea of cutting through the crap and getting straight to fun stuff, the side-effect is certain scenes coming across as random and/or silly.
In fact, the plot movement is incredibly jumpy, with the first 20 or 30 minutes setting things up over the course of a single day, before jumping to a week into the ordeal then, without warning, 29 days.
It's also a shame the vampires aren't developed further. For all their brutality, the head of the pack is a fan of making speeches (in some undisclosed language) and everything he says and does seems to hint at some deeper story that is never told.
On the other hand, the story-telling mechanic does prevent a lot of the usual horror-movie clichés (or, at least, sweeps them aside before they wrench your gut too much) and it also helps keep the pace up, despite the number of quieter scenes, in place to crank up the tension.
All-in-all, despite its patchiness, it’s a lot of fun, with some great effects and set-pieces and masses of gore, as well as solid performances from the leads (Hartnet and the head vamp in particular).
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