Kingdoms of Amalur
My love for RPGs has me playing this game a little too much. Too a break from it, but it has it’s pull on me, like the Earth on the moon.
Wuss. . .
OK, I’m being very chicken shit right now by not choosing the screenplays I need to complete for my portfolio. I get like that sometimes, mentally congested. It’s not writer’s block. I know I can write, but when I get too wimpy about the decisions I know its time for one thing, and that’s a new blog post.
Today is the day I decided to get to writing, and if that means I have to write twenty blog posts to get the juices flowing, then I will. I admit I do love science fiction/fantasy then immediately shied away from it because I fear everyone’s reaction to the material. OK. I just lost one big battle without even trying. That’s beyond fail. That’s just a sad state of affairs.
I’ve decided to go back to a few projects I created a while back and will develop them irregardless of how insecure I feel now. They are already strong concepts that need direction. It’s my duty to make these screenplays shine.
So now I have my four screenplays. They come at the top of my development list. I will work on others after these. For the record, the genres are contemporary fantasy, superhero, comedy, and comedy-horror. Don’t care what’s trending. These guys are at the top of my list. Suck it indecision!
Now onto TV scripts. I originally wanted two, but I feel a need to ambitiously try three. For those I have science fiction, horror and comedy shows to develop. Now to commit more to the project.
P.S. This in no way diminishes the time and energy placed into my thesis. If I have to write a blog post to keep up the groove on a daily basis I will.
Contributing Rocks!
I wrote this post about Pan’s Labyrinth for Tastes Like Comics, and I’m very proud of it. I want to share it here, but feel a repost would be a little too much. Visit TLC. While the theme of our get together is comics, its so much more. I love the articles my friends wrote. We in turn love the work we do. Labors of love can be a worthwhile treasure.
I Was Sucker Punched
Lotsa style. So much potential.
I went to see the latest Zach Snyder film, Sucker Punch, and I have to say, as someone who likes Snyder, I felt immensely cheated here. I’m a fan of his previous films, Watchmen and 300. I knew this one would be fun, after all, there was all this hype and the visuals from teasers look like the standard fare. Also it doesn’t take one long to realize that I am a fan of the doppelgänger and the psyche in films. He had me interested from the start but like I said before, I felt cheated.
As with all Snyder films, the visuals are sharp, and the fighting scenes are well choreographed. The scenery has that nice CGI shinerey I come to expect. Parts of the film were grimy, as the mental asylum was intended. The looks of the imagined worlds has some fine details to it. Clearly we’re suppose to see the ladies in the group as some bad ass sirens who get the job done. Even the fetishized touches to their costumes work well in the dream world.
I felt, however, that the narrative and the genres of the films were vastly underdeveloped. In this respect it gives us a mishmash instead of a clever mash-up of genres. As we progress into giant samurai’s, WW II steampunk/clockwork German soldiers, high fantasy style dragons and monsters, I wish at some point there was a stronger plot to belong to this film. At the very least it should have poked fun at itself because it comes off as far too serious.
The story starts off like a psychological thriller where the heroine’s stepfather realizes the daughters inherit the recently deceased Mother’s fortune/estate. The stepfather attempts to kill the daughters, and the youngest of the two dies, and the oldest (Baby Doll) is sent to a mental institution to be lobotomized. From here we go into a surreal world partly inside our heroine’s head. She’s a trapped stripper and the ladies around her go into her dream within dreams on a set of quests for freedom. I feel I’ve been Inceptioned with these dreams within dreams, for all the wrong reasons.
Ignoring some serious plot logic, Sucker Punch delivers all the action and violence with no story to back it up. This might as well be a commercial for deodorant. ”How much pressure can these ladies take before they start to sweat?” The film simply doesn’t do anything with character, narrative, or cohesiveness. One thing that really irked me is that you discover that the dream concepts have some ties to the real world, in a roundabout way. Baby Doll helps a fellow inmate escape, but why? Which parts are real? What is fakery? Why doesn’t Baby Doll ever discuss the loss of her sister? Does the lobotomy help her escape her guilt?
One thing I hate is how the film concludes. The heroine doesn’t really do what we think she’s set out to do, which is free herself. It felt very unresolved and empty. Her fellow escapees meet resolutions in such a brutal way that makes the offender’s own arrest seem a neat way to wrap the story. The ending was so dry and ugly, one wishes the stepfather came back at the last minute in the film and was arrested, killed, or beaten until he confesses. Instead we have a heroine who wishes to be lobotomized, and she gets her wish.
I think for a template the creative team could have used The Wizard of Oz, or even Alice in Wonderland if they were going to play around with the psyche in this film. I hate to say this about this film, I do think it may be interesting to see on DVD/rental/cable, but is was more than disappointing to see at the theater. It may be fun to visit the site and get a taste of the visuals, which are worth a look. Travel at your own leisure.
Dragon Age II: Demolicious
Hawke is the man
So on February 22, Bioware released a demo of the RPG Dragon Age II. I downloaded it. A good friend asked why not just wait for the two weeks when the full game is released on March 8th, which is a fantastic question. There is some free DLC for downloading the demo, but I wanted to do two more things: One I am going to review Dragon Age II on SDCS. The second is that I wanted to try the different classes without having to commit to a heavy playthrough. Let me tell you what I found out.
First you play as Hawk. Choose this character’s class (mage, rogue or warrior) and gender. You and your family have fled Lothering from the Blight (Darkspawn –they kinda look like an army of Skeletors in this game). Needless to say they’re nasty and they kill anything that’s living. The environment looks ravaged. In playing the original games, Lothering was rather green and prosperous. The Kokari wilds were green with ancient buildings by the Tenvineter Impirum that lasted for ages. It’s all gone.
Each class has a talent tree and for the sake of the demo some of them are locked/unknown at the moment, which is fine for me. I like a little surprise with the actual game.
The Darkspawn: Not ready for their close-ups.
I chose my favorite class, Mage, to play first. After playing Dragon Age: Origins, and Dragon Age Awakenings, I can tell you that the mage’s skills are more than enhanced for gameplay. The mage can perform better combat attacks for creatures (mainly Darkspawn in the demo) that get too close, and the spells are a high improvement.
He (or she) doesn’t have the strength of the warrior or rogue for physical attacks however the spells are pretty powerful. Also distance attacks are pretty amazing. I was able to use the fire and ice spells (as well as healing, and some of the psychic abilities) just fine. The controls are a little different, but familiar enough to catch on fast.
As the rogue, this cat is quick and skilled. I will say the miasma/saboteur tree makes a world of difference in combat. I am a big fan of distance attacks and having the ability to stun clusters of enemies at once is a good thing. The rogue moves fast, and has the ability to reappear behind enemies for some backstabbing action. The rogue moves so fast I almost didn’t think I would keep up with his acrobatics, but I did.
Hawke as a rogue. Dual weapons rule.
The rogue typically uses dual weapons or the bow and arrow. Tried them both. All I can say is those who use the bow and arrow tree are able to pick off targets at a distance and even fight up distance. I was impressed.
As a warrior I am a failure. While I like the strength and the ability to wield the dual-hand sword, I simply don’t excel here. No distance attacks. No high speed. I did get to mow down my enemies by subdividing them. The gore factor is amped like crazy. Blood and body parts everywhere. It’s perfect for the game. I found I’m just a poor warrior. I was not as flexible as the rogue, and did not give the hardcore blast of power of the mage. I am no warrior.
The voice acting is superb. Kate Mulgrew as Flemmeth is a great moment. She’s different from her appearance in DA:O. That’s all I’ll say about her. None of the other characters grated my ears.
The Demo did have some drawbacks. I couldn’t use the tactics to have the characters use the poultices and draughts to heal themselves restore their mana/stamina. I did simply take over a party member and made the choice for them to keep them from dying. Also there was no switching gear except for in the beginning for the rogue and warrior. Again some talent/spell trees were locked. Not that I think Bioware’s gonna give all the goods out in a demo.
Dragon Age II
I love Dragon Age. Looking forward to DA II. If I have my way, and I shall, this will be the first game I will review on this site.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula: The Sublime Power of Eros and Thanotos
There used to be a time when vampires didn’t fake their way through high school to seduce a mopey teenager. They were quite evil, selfish, and got what they wanted with little care or consequence in the world. Your virginity be damned, like your soul. People didn’t come back from this nightmare, or they were so changed one wondered what happened after the film ended.
Dracula represents Christianity vs the Turks in the prologue
So in 1992 a film was released, and boldly called, Bram Stoker’s Dracula. One of its key slogans was, “love never dies.” Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, starring Gary Oldman (Dracula), Winona Ryder (Mina/Elizabeta), Anthony Hopkins (Van Helsing/Priest), and Keanu Reeves (Jonathan Harker), this film does its best to give us gothic horror mixed with fairy tale motifs, and angst for the centuries.
Doppelgangers are abound in this film. You will see so many of them. Look for Van Helsing twice in the film, as well as Dracula, Mina, and Lucy. Each displays the other self that compliments and damns them. It’s quite a vicious site to behold. As we know the other self can be a sight to behold. More importantly, being a vampire seems to suggest that a person looses their inhibitions, and their humanity.
"Love never dies," yet it did. Bye, bye Elizabeta.
Religious themes cannot be ignored here, as God is brought into question. After all, when Dracula was human, he fought on behalf of the church. It is the tragedy of his beloved’s Elizabeta (who commits suicide), that causes him to question his faith and his “reward” for fighting on God’s behalf.
Eroticism plays a sly and sometimes disgusting part in this film. Dracula seduces Mina, then rapes and kills her friend Lucy. This visitations to Lucy are brutal, and Dracula does not keep his charming, young form he uses on Mina. Instead he looks bestial, deadly, and terrifying. By contrast, he looks young and studly when he visits Mina. When Jonathan encounters him, Dracula appears as creepy old man whose shadow does stay in place and often reveals what the count is feeling at the time. The shadow is a classic Jungian archetype, and the other self and unconscious desires do come to the surface.
To say Dracula represents all the aspects wrong with our psyches is a fair statement. He is the id (switching from Jung to Freud here), and boy is he ugly. There is a reason we as humans suppress and repress our desires. Not all of them are fit for the material world.
As an adaptation goes, the film doesn’t stay as faithful as one would like to believe to the source material, however I will say that Coppola went for a different route than most Dracula films I saw before it. This go round, Dracula knows love, and ultimately love can redeem him, as it was love that cause him to spite and curse God, resulting in his transformation into a creature of evil. This film definitely goes for the artistic, emotional side of storytelling with some commercial concessions. Bram Stoker’s Dracula cannot be accused of lacking style or ambition. Noter the use of the old school Pathé camera when Dracula comes to England. It’s a street scene that again emphasizes the techniques, which reinforce the atmosphere.
The prologue sets the stage well with who Dracula was before he became a creature of evil. Here the fairy tale motifs come alive: We have a warrior prince, a princess, love, yearnings, and one ugly curse. Lucy’s buried in a glass coffin that is straight out of Snow White. The fight scene in the prologue is a little odd as it takes place in shadows against a reddish-orange sky. The scene reminds me of stage plays where color could be used to show emotion.
Poor Lucy get's "turned out" just cause Dracula wanted it to happen.
Much is made of blood and contamination in the film. If it reflects society, AIDS became a major issue. Its not surprising someone who needs blood to live is at the war with the world around him who has no real idea he exists.
Note several of the editing and special effects in the film. When Lucy is revisited by Dracula t some point the film is reversed. Her moves appear unnatural. Likewise when Van Helsing confronts Lucy as a vampire, and she backs into the coffin, the moves again appear unnatural. The cut away scenes from circular and round shapes add a distinct, otherworldly feel to the world.
While this film makes a strong connection to love and redemption, make no mistake Dracula is very evil. He and his wives suck the blood of babies, he kills and kidnaps Jonathan in order to seduce Mina (whom he believes to be reincarnated version of his lost love, Elizabeta). He rapes, then murders Lucy out of spite of Mina’s rejection of him for Jonathan. Being a vampire is gory, unholy, and to a great extent ugly. Dracula has many brides, but he only has eyes for Mina. Sadly love can’t make him whole, just make him see the error of his existence. Also turning Mina is something of a bitter struggle as Dracula confesses to Mina, it’s not pretty.
Is this what they mean by "short end of the stick?" Ouch.
Color is abound in this film as it takes on multiple energies. Note Lucy’s colorful and somewhat outlandish outfits (in fact several of the outfits are more artistic that historically accurate). The night outfits Lucy and Mina were to bed are sublime but out of place for the era.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula’s score, composed by Wojciech Kilar, plays a key part in providing the atmosphere with some extra demented, gothic emotions. The music moves from serene, elegant, to sublime. There are simply moments where the one realizes there is danger in the score itself. Such heartbreaking melodies with somber elements to emphasize the romance and tragedy.
There are a lot of downers in this film as well so don’t think this is all a love-fest. Keanu’s accent is terrible. I wish someone told him to keep his American accent. It would have fit him (and the film) better. Instead when I hear it, I laugh. I love Oldman’s accent, but not everyone falls for it. A friend suggested it’s overplayed, and his hairdo and get ups are so over the top you may laugh (be warned Jonathan Harker laughs at Dracula and gets a sword in his face for his amusement).
The ending could have been, much, much, stronger because it’s clear that Mina is in love with both Jonathan and Dracula. I thought Jonathan and Mina’s confrontation was weak considering he fought so hard to get back to her, and she turned Dracula away to be with Jonathan. Mina plays both ends of the fence here. She may need the closure like Dracula, but she half-asses it.
If you purchase the DVD or Blu-Ray, the commentary and extras were worth it for me, as Francis Ford Coppola and his son Roman Coppola discuss the visual effects for the film. There is talk of the screenplay, director’s commentary, and some behind the scenes goodness I enjoyed. If you like your vampires evil and with a touch of redemption, then this the film for you. Mind you, nobody gets what they want but Dracula in the end, and the accents are grating.
