Posts Tagged ‘Film’

Pick any one of Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman or John Malkovich and you’d have my attention for RED.

Brian Cox or Ernest Borgnine would push this into my want to see list.

Helen Mirren flower arranging is a bit a bit Calendar Girls. Helen Mirren with a machine gun? Helen Mirren with a Machine Gun! Ok I’m buying this. Heading into not just the danger zone but Hot Fuzz territory.  I don’t care about the reviews.

Then they ice a rather fruit looking cake with Mary-Louise Parker who was both funny and smart in the West Wing.  Tasty.

Looks like REDs at least one must see film in October.

Half my brain liked The Losers the other half isn’t so sure.  First the good things…

The comedy – it wasn’t always timed perfectly – but there was plenty of humour and it was drawn from the characters.

The action was solid and sometimes creative.  The way The Losers could be casual when going up against what appeared to be tough opposition made a change from the oh to0 serious, walk slowly away from explosions without looking back school of action hero.  The moment when Clay and Roque take a moment to enjoy an explosion was really refreshing.  Thats when Clay and Roque really work – not when they’re banging heads.

Jensen, the tech guy, wasn’t just there as a comedy element.  He might not have been able to handle himself as much as some of the other characters but he wasn’t helpless or tied to a keyboard.  He gets some good moments, especially in the sequence where he breaks into the office building.

Jason Patric’s villain seems more self-aware of his villany than any bad guy since Benedict in Last Action Hero.  He had something of an old school Bond villain about him but with a twist of Tarantino.

The minor things…

Don’t Stop Believing is a nice song.  I like it.  I don’t own it but I like it.  It’s a shame they couldn’t pick a song that’s not been done to death of late for such a prominent role in the soundtrack.  With a different song the film could have been setting a trend rather than following where others have been.

The styling was a bit in your face and a bit too obvious.  Tropical Thunder has done for this school of action film what Monty Python’s Holy Grail did for coconuts as hoof beats.  Thats a shame because if it had a bit more of its own visual language it could have been really great.  I’ve not read the original comics.  It’s a shame because the comic book imagery used at the start and end hints at a visual language that could have played a bigger part in the film without going down the 300 / Sin City route.

Idris Elba:  I like Idris Elba.  I thought he was good in Ultraviolet and excellent in The Wire.  Unfortunately since then he seems to be taking roles that involve him chewing the scenery as much as possible.  That could be good.  He can clearly act.  “Stringer” Bell in The Wire had more range and greater subtlety than either his current part as Luther on the BBC or Roque and that is a shame.

The plot isn’t full of wholes [note: that should be full of holes - normally I'd change it but I love that turn of phrase] but it doesn’t feel entirely developed or possibly not fully explained.  It’s there more as a vehicle for the action.  I’ll live with that – its true of plenty of action films and many have plots with bigger holes.

Now the bad thing…

The film didn’t allow me to invest in the characters destinies. I didn’t care enough about them.  When they got shot I should have cared.  When one of them goes bad I should have cared.  I didn’t.  That was the films major flaw for me.  Die Hard is a good action film – it’s a great action film because I care what happens to John McClane.  The same is true of Lethal Weapon and lots of other action films.  There were things written in to make us like the characters in The Losers: the heroes rescue the children at the start and suffer for it, Jensen’s niece, Pooch’s pregnant wife and Clay’s problems with women.  Everyone except Roque had something (and maybe what he needed was something to give him some depth).  However it felt like the film maker begrudged having to use those humanising elements for anything other than comedy value.  They might have been better off without the clutter and going for the anonymous ’60s style Mission Impossible agents defined by their relationships with each other.

Overall…

The Losers is a good, silly action film that I feel could have been an awful lot better had the style been a bit fresher and if I we’d been given a reason to care more about the characters.  Maybe I’m analysing the film too much in the hope that there would be something else if I scratched the surface.

Review of Clash of the Titans in the style of the film.

Story OK but a bit like it was cobbled together for twitter.

Looked good. Nice costumes and props.

Mix of solid and good special effects.

Sound seemed a bit lacklustre.  Might have been the system in the cinema.

Gods were great.  So was Olympus.  Would love to have seen more of it.

Were the hunters written to be played by Omid Djalili and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson but they couldn’t get them: now that would be a double act I’d pay to see.

Nothing to say about Sam Worthington.

Felt like he needed to have screen time with someone to raise his game.  Needed to be a bit of a bigger hero even if he was being man rather than god. Ok so I did have something to say. Lol.

Could they cram a couple more cameos in?  The religious nutter could have been played by Russell Brand.  Andy Serkis as the Kraken?

Yeh “Unleash the Kraken”.

Soundtrack felt it had fallen off the back of a lorry (the one gladiators’ soundtrack was on just with the wailing woman turned down to 4 from 11).

Who was who? Most only got a name check when they died.

Not very epic. Needed more flesh. Maybe longer than 106 minutes.  More Greek legend for the SMS generation.

Despite all that enjoyed it as popcorn.

Just back from a night out with some friends for a meal and then on to see Solomon Kane at the Odeon in Liverpool 1.  Before I get to the film good to see that the Odeon seems to have improved since the last couple of times I’ve been there.  The cinema was clean and had enough staff.

Solomon Kane’s plot doesn’t stand out from other fantasy films.  Where it does stand out is setting and acting.  First the setting is unusual: early 17^th century England with a mix of witchcraft, sorcery and puritans.  It’s not history but it is a lot of pulp fun.  I know some reviews have been upset by anachronisms.  Again this is pulp fiction not historic re-enactment.  Stop worrying about the flag being wrong – most of the audience don’t know and would have needed an explanation of who the ships belonged to if they’d flown a flag other than the union jack.  That explanation would have been far more grating and story destroying than a flag being flown early.

Solomon Kane’s cinematography and design is of the mud, rain and dirt school previously used for films like Bother Hood of the Wolf and Plunkett & Macleane.  The CGI is competent and doesn’t distract by being overly flashy.

The action is built up of small scale skirmishes but then, that is more in fitting with the setting.   Anyone worrying about the flag ought to be even more worried about explaining away a major uprising during the last years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign rather than a little local difficulty.  Sticking with small skirmishes also allows the action to remain personal, focussed on Kane.

As with the plot the dialogue is clichéd peppered with biblical quotes which could have been disastrous.  The quality acting which delivers the lines straight without slipping into camp manages to turn lines like “Hold you dogs!” into pulp gold.  Kane’s West Country accent was also a joy – forget songs about combine harvesters it added yet more flavour to the film.

Solomon Kane isn’t going to be to everyone’s taste.  Reading some reviewes its pulp sensibilities clearly upset some: it play fast and loose with history in a way that upsets those obsessed with the colour of epaulettes on uniforms; it upsets Robert E Howard purists; it upsets big spectacle fantasy fans by being small and personal.

Personally I thought it was a fun film and I’ll be picking up on DVD  and hoping for a sequel.

Oh dear looks like I need to get my grumpy hat out for both Il Forno and The Informant…

Went to Il Forno on Duke Street in Liverpool for dinner before going to see the early evening showing of The Informant at FACT.  Things started well with quick service and an excellent swordfish tart starter (with a name far too long to remember).  Unfortunately this is the point at which I have to become Mr Grumpy.  If a waiter announces that your pizzas are amongst the 10 best in the whole country they’d better be very good.  I’ve certainly had better pizzas from two other restaurants in Liverpool, two Liverpool takeaways, a restaurant in London and a takeaway in Sheffield.  Unfortunately both pizzas we ordered were described as bland so it wasn’t just me.   Personally I’d have prefered a more interesting pizza that was half the size.  To be fair I’ve had far worse ones in lots of places too.  Then I could have tried one of the deserts they offered us three times.  Overall opinion starter good, service OK and I’d try a different main course if I went again.

So on to the real main course of the evening as it were, the film The Informant picked largely because nothing else was on that appealed.  First could someone explain to me why Matt Damon was playing Mark Whitacre in the style of William H. Macy.  Did he have a bet with George Clooney, couldn’t they get William H. Macy himself or did someone decide that William H. Macy wasn’t a big enough name to star so cast Matt Damon to try and sell the film to audiences?

The story itself was a mess that every time it threatened to get interesting ran away from itself.  The meat was the technicality of the various crimes, deceptions and alleged crimes.  Each time they got close to one they brushed it out of sight as though it was scary stuff requiring a bit of (oh no!) thought and comprehension.  It was like watching a heist film in which showing a safe being cracked was technical and boring so lets not bother.  Hang on though did they really think this film was going to attract an audience who were looking for a no brainer action flick?

Then there was the really odd sound track and the 1970s retro font.  Fine except the film was set in the 1990s.  There were a large number of supporting characters who became interesting and then vanished.  Scott Bakula in particular was there and then suddenly gone treatment.  I’d make a Quantum Leap reference but it would be too easy a joke.  Now you may say this was based on a real life story but as they made clear before the film started they’d taken liberties with it.  So why not take the liberty needed to make it interesting?

The Informant just didn’t seem to know what it was: docudrama? docucomedy? In the end it was just docudisaster.  As it stands it’s a bad attempt at making a film in the style of a sprawling based on real life drama from the ’70s.  Maybe with William H. Macy and the Coen brothers directing possibly focusing on the investigation of what must have been an ever more bizarre situation it could have been a film worth seeing.  Personally I’d suggest saving your time and money.

Fanstastic Mr Fox is probably my favourite Roald Dahl children’s story.  So today I decided I’d go and see it at the Odeon in Liverpool 1 and crossed my fingers they’d not treated the source material as a slum clearance job it like Disney did with Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

Given the source materials brevity it’s unsurprising they had to pad it to make it up to feature length.  The core story still sits at the heart of the film but a additions at the start and the end along with some padding in the middle brought it up to its 87 minutes.  While none of the additions were bad the incomprehensible sport seemed to me to be a joke forced a little to hard.  On reflection and a quick reread of the original story the ending is probably, saddly a little two Hollywood.  Maybe something less action orientated and closer to the heist movie theme that works so well earlier on.  They were almost there but not quite.  One last big job to break into a highly secure supermarket knowing it was a trap might have worked.

George Clooney and Meryl Streep had a lot of work to do and both delivered good performances.  Willem Dafoe’s take on the rat made his my favourite character of the film.  It was completely different from his Raven Shaddock performance in Streets of Fire (1984) but just as distinctive.  Part of me wonders what his take on Mr Fox would have been.  If you need someone to nail that kind of bad guy he’s still got it.  Michael Gambon was another exceptionally fine choice for Bean and while I had to check on IMDB Brian Cox was another fine piece of casting.

The animation style reminded me of Jill Bennetts illustrations in the book and was very well done.  Unfortunately it wasn’t quite up to the standards of say an Aardman Animation but was by no means sloppy.  Somehow Aardman’s work looks more cinematic and less like some of the eastern European animations of the 1970′s.  However maybe that was the look they were trying for in which case they nailed it.  Anyone with the resources or time to do stop animation deserves a great deal of respect.

Ignoring my gripes about the way the original material was expanded I’d say it was a very enjoyable 87 minutes.

I saw it on the first showing of the day in a screen which I thought I had to myself till someone else left from the very back at the end.  Odeon really need to get on top of their cleaning because if the cinema is dirty for the first show of the day what hope is there for the later shows?

How players’ characters approach a simple doors in a setting says a lot about a role playing game. A cautious door approach can indicate a game with high character mortality or it may simply, as in the case of D&D and its many subsequent editions, reveal that every door opened is likely to result in a new encounter. At the opposite extreme in high action low lethality games doors may be simply kicked down, blown up or smashed through.

On another level doors can also let us know quite a lot about a game system. Does a door have statistics for how strong it is, how much armour it has or how easy it is to pick the lock. Do doors have a price tag? This usually means that characters can get rich enough to comission buildings or that the game designer who made the equipment lists is either a quantity surveyor or needs medical help. Finally how many dice rolls will a party make to get through a door?

Here are a few (humerous) illustrations, if I’ve missed your favorite game feel free to e-mail me your suggestions. A version of this list first appeared in Valkyrie but over the years a few more games and settings have been added. The odd game which isn’t an RPG has crept in too (it’s my list so neh if you don’t like that!)

D&D (Original 1st Edition)

Thief uses hear noise to listen at door, finds traps, removes trap from door, open lock and walks through the door.

Call of Cthulu

Open the door, see greater being lose 1d100 San.

Tunnels and Trolls

I roll my bucket of dice the door rolls its bucket of dice.

Munchkin

Open the treasure, kill the door, steal the monster.

AD&D

Thief uses hear noise to listen at door. Barbarian (Unearthed Arcana) smashes door down in frustration

Role Master

Check breaking down doors critical table.

Shadow Run

Street Samurai blow the door away with a GPMG. Decker walks up and politely asks the door to open.
Racoon Shaman walks up to door and asks spirit to open the door. Troll ignores door as inconsequential to its worldview and carries on through it.

Vampire

Agonise over the door. Explore the political, sensual and aesthetic properties of the door.

Champions/Hero

How many points is the door built with?

Munchkin Fu

Open the treasure, kill the door, steal the monster.

Star Trek: The Next Generation (Unicorn Games)

If the door doesn’t open with a “woosh-woosh” call the Tellarite Engineer by striking your nipple and talking to the air. When they arrive they will open it using an Engineering Systems (Intellect) Environmental Systems test.

OG The Role Playing Game of Prehistoric Free-Style Role Playing Game System

“You Me Small Rock Bang Tree Thing”.

Traveller

Short lived character blown out of airlock door during character generation shock.

Legend of the Five Rings

Challenge the door to an Ijitsu duel. Raise. Raise. Raise. Pass. Then kill it with a single well-placed blow.

Kobolds Ate My Baby

Kobold hits door with other kobold until door (or kobold) breaks.

Spycraft

Defeat undefeatable biometric lock with false finger prints lifted from evil corporate executives/renegade CIA/terrorists stupidly expensive bottle of imported, designer, micro-brewery beer stolen by a beautiful, double agent working undercover for the CIA/FBI/DEA/MI5/DSS within the organisation of the evil corporate executives/renegade CIA/terrorists who has a cover job at a bank and a couple of friends who havn’t a clue.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

Kick the door down with gritty British style.

Star Trek

If the door doesn’t open with a “woosh-woosh” either apply a judicious use of a Scottish accent or break out the phaser rifles and blow it away.

AD&D 2^nd Edition

Thief (Treasure Seeker Kit) uses hear noise to listen at door. Half Ogre (Book of Humanoids) Fighter (Hairy Barbarian Kit – Fighters Handbook) smashes door down with Axe +5 door smasher while wearing girdle of Storm Giant Strength.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Curse Cardassian’s persuade a Ferengi to get the parts in return for trade right in another quadrant. When they don’t deliver on time because of an incident involving a shape shifter and a plasma conduit get the Klingon to force it open.

Twilight 2000

Not much of an issue because 1) there has been a nuclear war 2) all the doors have all been used to make shelters following the instructions in Protect and Survive.

Two-Fisted Tales

Kick door down, draw pistols, roll through both guns blazing, stand up, get knocked unconious by bad guy hiding behind the door.

D&D 3rd Edition

Thief uses only a d20 to open the door not needing any of those other dice that earlier editions were made so complicated by.

OG The Role Playing Game of Prehistoric Free-Style Role Playing Game System

“You Me Small Rock Bang Tree Thing”.

Elite

Begin your new life as Commander Jameson stocks up on Food and Minerals at Lave. Jump to a nearby system. Fight a Krait rendered lovingly in innovative vector graphics. Locate the Coriolis station and approach it. Fly near to the station towards the planet (monitoring altitude carefully). About face so your ship is orientated towards the entrance. Approach at DEAD SLOW SPEED (original manual’s emphasis not mine). Manually control the Cobra’s roll to match the rotation of the Coriolis station. The entry port must be as nearly horizontal as possible. Scrape the sides of the aperture. Lose defensive shields and cargo. Suffer a horrible death as your body is exposed to space. Work har to raise the credits to buy an automatic docking computer so you never have to manually dock again.

GURPS: Doors

Steve Jackson Games could never get that desperate. Could they?

Dark Conspiracy

Drive through the sprawl to the demonground in ’50s cool, retro styled car. Strut from car to door in an outfit straight out of a Meat Loaf / Bonnie Tyler video accessorised with pistol, assault rifle, grappling hook and flash light. Argue with GM when you claim your character has Darkling Empathy. Persuade him you do. Sense nothing on other side of the door. Kick down the door. Find a massive swarm of Michael Jackson style zombies waiting to eat your brains. Make note on the character sheet of the now dead character to back down if the GM catches you cheating with your next character.

Deadlands

Shoot the lock with a six-shooter then swagger in.

Toon

Remove one extra large ACE rubber hammer from pocket and apply to door until it falls down.

Cyberpunk

The fixer obtains a really hot deck, the netrunner takes three hours of play to do the run to get past all the black IC and unlock the door. The cybered up solo fights their way to the door and opens it. The Corporate walks cautiously out of their private rest room and pays everyone.

Trail of Cthulhu

Open door. Wonder why you ever played that other Cthulhu game. See greater being. Lose Mind.

Pantheon

And on the thirtieth day Buzz Saw the god of carpentry and other handicraft invented the door thus putting an end to the reign of terror brought upon the mortals by the goddess of drafts Swanway. Challenge!

Feng Shui

Character use all their chi in a devastating Storm of the Tiger bare handed strike and watch the door disintegrate into splinters.

James Bond 007 RPG

Pick lock. Draw Walther PPK. Open Door. Trip over white cat coming the other way through the door. Get captured by Evil Genius’ henchmen set on world domination. Get taken to Evil Geniu’s secret base. Face certain, slow death in Evil Genius’ secret agent (slow) killing device. Escape when Evil Geniu’s back is turned. Stop Evil Geniu’s not so genius evil plan. Escape from soon to be destroyed base. Get the girl/boy.

Lost Souls

Walk through the door without opening it but only three times a day.

Dr Who

What else is a sonic screw driver for?

Millennium’s End

Set the shaped charge plastic explosive strip round the door. Retire to a safe distance. Detonate it and watch it fall quietly inwards.

Extreme Vengeance

Set Plastic Explosive charges on the door. Retire a short distance. Set off the charges then stride into the room like a manly man.

Hong Kong Action Theatre

Set Plastic Explosive charge on the door. Retire a short run up away. Run at the door, set off the charges and ride the blast wave into the room full of mooks as a grade A stunt.

Sengoku

Kneel before the door and wait patiently for someone to ask you in.

Conspiracy X

Opening the door was the easy part. Covering up what you find on the other side will take all your guile, skill, ingenuity and just a few resource points of used up gear.

The Babylon Project

This joke awaiting approval by JMS.

d20 Modern

Agonise over best door opening method between magic, psionics, lock picking, a lump of C4 or good old brute force. Then do it just the same as in regular d20.

Star Wars

Use the Force. If that fails use a Thermal Detonator.

Babylon 5

Ko’Dath demonstrates airlock accidents are not just a problem for Traveller characters.  The only real question is did G’Kar give her a little push?

7^th Sea

Doors are for the boring. Use a crossbow to fire a grapple to the roof and swing in through the stain glass window. Gain one Drama Dice.

Bushido

Kneel before door and commit seppuku embarrassing the door into opening.

SLA Industries

The Wraith Sniper covers the door from 1000m while the Ebon uses Sense to feel what is on the other side of the door. The media package Brain Waster films the Frother (aka Barbarian in a skirt on drugs) charge in hyped up on UV and Kick Start who tears into it with a flick scythe. The finance package human tries to balance the profit from the film footage with the charge for the damage to the door including bullet tax and form fees.

Wraith

What’s my character’s motivation to bother with the door?

Paranoia

What colour is the door handle?

Mage

Entropy mage twiddles a stick near a door. The door unlocks itself and swings open.

Stargate SG 1

Combat engineer complains at not being allowed to open door with explosives on a sneaky, sneaky mission. Takes door off hinges using powered screw driver instead.

Marvel Universe

Check you have enough counters to open the door while feeling remarkably reasured that this is a newer, better, different type of game from those other roleplaying games. It says so in the book. Which explains why it vanished when it wasn’t a big hit.

Changeling

Wander up to door. Smile sweetly. Walk through.

Lord of the Rings

Oh Please we are just so much a better class of fantasy RPG than to lower ourselves to that kind of door opening scene. I mean we might win an Oscar* and we are consistently voted the greatest book ever. Oh alright then – the Fellowship find a blank bit of cliff by a nasty looking pool. Big G waves his hand and a secret door and some secret elf-letters are revealed but it remains closed. Everyone wonders what “speak, friend and enter” means. Big G doesn’t know. Everyone gets dismayed. Wolves howl in the distance. A couple of pages and some howling wolves later Big G solves it. The door opens. Happy now?

Werewolf

Kick the vampires out of the way, walk through the wraiths, treat the changeling with pure disdain snarl at the mage until they get the message break down the door.

All Flesh Must Be Eaten

Whats the point? We know there will be zombies on the other side!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Agonise over teenage troubles and the pressure of responsibility then open the door and kick
some demonic vampire backside while looking cool and without breaking a nail.

World of Warcraft

Millions of paying players, a lock picking skill and an engineering profession but only twenty doors in the whole universe. We’re finding it hard to work out what they are.

* We went on to win 11 of them (more than Star Wars got) not that we were counting.

Skipper Dan

Weird Al’s latest song sounds like it should be the theme for a US sitcom or maybe a film. Maybe not his greatest song ever but it has something…

I owe the creators of Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire a big thank you. A couple of months back I wrote a script for a 30 minute radio sit com more by accident than intention. I had an idea one morning and seven hours later I had 6,700 words written set in a generic fantasy world. I’d been struggling to work out what wasn’t right with it. Having watched the first episode of Krod Mandoon I’ve now got some pretty good ideas about what not to do.

First Terry Pratchett has produced so much comedy fantasy since 1983 that you’ve got to work hard at it. Its not like Pratchett, with 55 million books sold worldwide, is some sort of secret, niche author that a good chunk of your audience won’t have read. So a wizard who can’t do spells needs something to make them special if they won’t be unfavourably compared to Rincewind. The same goes for pretty much any cliche character you decide to use.

Anachronisms in fantasy settings also need to be clever – be it a character’s with 20th century attitudes or one suggesting going for counselling. Stoppard did it far better in that little known film Shakespeare in Love (Worldwide Gross $279,500,000).

And if you’re going to have a narrator that everyone in the scene can hear you’re going to have to push the boat out a bit and take a real run at the third wall and go way past Up Pompeii or Hustle to make it be funny – its been done before.

Which left humorous names, which tend to wear thin pretty fast (except some of the ones the Python team pulled off), the silly jokes – in the style of airplane (which made me laugh to be fair) – and the below the belt jokes – which I have no objection to but I prefer them to be funny. Still its a fantasy show so dressing your attractive female lead in leather, make their character just a little promiscuous, say Xena Warrior Princess a hundred times, and hope it will save your ratings (and make sure your male star will go down well with the ladies too).

So I’m going to be taking a red pen to my script and cutting or reworking anything that’s like that and a whole line of jokes about an ass I was thinking of adding are not getting anywhere near the script either.

Maybe it didn’t help that several review I read compared KM to Red Dwarf which builds an expectation. Red Dwarf wasn’t highly polished but it was funny. KM on the other hand was very polished but, at least as far as I was concerned, wasn’t very funny. However I’ll be fair to them the one hour format and it being the first episode might mean it wasn’t their best work. I’ll watch at least another couple of episodes of Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire. At worst they’ll give me some more pointers on what not to write.

But maybe there was a twist of something in the Romulan Ale.

I was pretty happy with J.J. Abrams take on Mission Impossible so I had high hopes for the new Star Trek film. I think I can safely say it didn’t disappoint. The cast played the characters rather than doing impressions of the original actors playing the characters. The effects were impressive. There were lots of nice touches for the fans without making it impenetrable for anyone who hasn’t watched all the gazillian hours of TV series and films plus read the various technical manuals. The plot made sense, which is always a plus point, even though it involved time travel.

It’s late so I’m going to leave it at that. Excellent film.

Update: Dark Dwarf has posted his impressions of Star Trek.