Have some weird: The 'Zardoz' Trailer

You know, looking at that I wonder how people could have ever thought that Zardoz was going to be a weird movie, what possible reason could they have had for thinking it might be strange? /sarcasm

New Rose Hotel - A Review

Ahh cyberpunk, what a genre, never before have writers found a medium where they can be so accurate about certain areas and yet so utterly wrong about them at the same time. Now this is not to say that I don't like cyberpunk, I like cyberpunk as a genre; Snow Crash is one of my favourite books, and I have this strange tradition of reading Neuromancer any time I'm going to an airport (don't ask, even I don't entirely know why, it seems almost Pavlovian:- airport = Neuromancer (I don't even have to be flying, I just keep a copy with me, and read it whenever I get the time)).

But that only covers books, what about films? Well, I've got to say, I just haven't found that many out there, perhaps I've just been looking in the wrong places but to my mind the only ones I could think of, off the top of my head were:

Keanu still remembers Johnny
Mnemonic, to his everlasting regret

• Cypher
• Blade Runner
• and Johnny Mnemonic, but the less said about that cinematic abortion the better.

But aside from this, I can't actually remember any others that I've seen, I'm sure there are and if I was reminded of them I'd think: "how could I forget that it's so obvious".  But based upon this, you can imagine my surprise when I came across the following:

This almost seems too good to be true, a film of a genre I want to see more of, based on a short story that I enjoyed, by an author that I like and starring not just Christopher Walken; but Christopher Walken and Willem Dafoe! What could possibly go wrong? Oh... it has Asia Argento in it as well... that's nice I guess, I'm sure that everything will continue to be fine though I mean how could it not?

So naturally with these thoughts in mind, I tracked down a copy of New Rose Hotel and eagerly sat down to watch it, and after an hour and a half, what can I say? Aside from possibly "can I have those 90 minutes back please?" Ok, that's a bit harsh, it isn't that bad, certainly not Johnny Mnemonic bad (sorry Mr Reeves but honestly, what were you thinking?), but it's just forgettable, don't get me wrong Walken gives a brilliant performance and is probably the only thing you'll want to see of this film. But Asia Argento can't act her way out of a paper bag, and as for her singing voice, I think I've found the background music for my own personal hell. As for poor Willem Dafoe, he really does get the short end of the stick, in most of his scenes he's stuck with Argento and any talent he displays just gets swamped by her inability to carry a scene; and in almost every other time he's with Walken who just dominates any scene he's in regardless of the situation.

Dafoe realise that he's stuck with Argento for another scene

As for the plot, well I'm not going to give you a synopsis here, my advice is to go and read the original William Gibson short story, go on I'll still be here while you do it... Done that? Good, we can continue. Adherence to the plot of the book is one area I can't fault this film on, it has it pretty much down to the letter, but this unfortunately is a bit of a problem because (being a short story) the plot runs out quite quickly, meaning that the director spends the last twenty minutes of the film showing us scenes from the start of the film but shot through a sort of filter, a "memory mist" if you will.

But in general, having been exposed to many bad movies in my time, I try and make a habit of taking away something positive from everything I watch, especially some kind of lesson that I can apply to future cinematic endeavours (for instance, Transformers 2 taught me that Michael Bay really needs some Ritalin), so here are the things New Rose Hotel taught me:

1. Asia Argento should never sing, it just sounds painful,
2. Any film with Willem Dafoe in it should carry a warning if it is going to feature him naked and thrusting
3. Run out of stuff to show in your film? Just show us the first half of the film all over again with a "memory mist" over the top of it
4. Not even Christopher Walken can rescue a bad movie

Well, that's it New Rose Hotel, watch it if you really want to, but in order to save you 85 minutes that could be put to better use, I present "The Best of Christopher Walken in New Rose Hotel" (because lets face it these are the only parts that you'll care about / ever mention).

So they're making a Mass Effect movie...

WHY?

I enjoy the Mass Effect series, I mean really enjoy it, its probably safe to say that I've sacrificed a few percent of my final mark for my degree with the time I've spent on it. So, it may initially seem surprising that the idea of a favourite thing of mine being adapted so that more people can enjoy it, is what I am officially considering my front runner for Worst Adaptation idea of the early 21st Century.

Allow me to expand on this; no film adaptation of a Video game has ever been a real success, and it would be naively optimistic to assume that Mass Effect will do any different. But in the mainstay, games that have been adapted already have had a major advantage over Mass Effect: none of them had as much freedom of choice available.  

Everyone who plays Mass Effect plays the game in a different fashion, Choice is a major part of the game, and personally it's one of the big draws of the game, that for once your actions have definite consequences in the games' Universe.  Whereas the vast majority of games that have been adapted have single linear path from start to finish, that can be easily adapted into a script, event A neatly ties into event B. This is not the case of Mass Effect, which follows more of a tree structure with the plot, from even before the game begins, you're faced with choices that will govern how the game turns out: what gender do you choose? what background? what specialisation? All of these allow you to tune the game to yourself, and how you want to play, and the choices become more and more frenetic after that: 

Do you go to Feros or Noveria first?

Or do you go and rescue Liara?

Do you kill the Rachni queen or not?

Do you leave Alenko or Williams behind to die?

Do you do all the side quests?

Do you romance Ashley/Alenko or Liara?

Or do you bide your time, hoping they make a certain Quarian mechanic romanceable in the second game?

Do you let the Council die, or sacrifice the Alliance fleet to defend them?

These are just some of the choices available, and everyone I've spoken to had a differing set of responses, to these questions, meaning that everyone has a different version of what the "true" Mass Effect story is, the odds are dramatically against the screen playing managing to make anyone happy, I predict many comments of "They clearly don't understand the real story of Mass Effect" being made when the film gets released (hell I'll probably be making them as well).

Then there are the actors, who are they going to cast? If they don't have the original voices, then there will be a lot of complaints made by people, and they'll be right. Every character already has a voice associated with them.  There's also the problem with how the cast will look, in general, with the majority of the rag tag bunch of misfits that you put together being aliens, CG is going to be extremely prevalent, but for the humans how are they going to work on that? Will they use actors who look vaguely like the characters? Or will they decide to use CG for the humans as well? If so, will they just use the CG from the game? Carrying on down this avenue of exploration, will they reason that most of the film has therefore been built for them already? If so, why not just use someone doing a play through of the game as the film?

This is something I can really see them considering, and the reason it won't work, is that the story of Mass Effect is one that needs to be interacted with, in order to get the most worth out of it.

Why am I doing this to myself?

So, I've been having trouble sleeping lately and have been staying up to ridiculous hours in the morning.  No real change from normal, but usually it's a case of choosing to stay up, rather than just staying up.  Now during this excess time, I've managed to productively do a lot of unproductive stuff (hurray for nearing 100% completion on Fallout 3), and I have no intention of moving away from this.  With this in mind, I present to you my entertainment for tonight:

The 1st "Abandon All Hope" Uwe Boll Film Marathon!

7 films totalling nearly 12 hours of "entertainment"

including such Boll KG classics as:

Alone in the Dark
BloodRayne
Far Cry
House of the Dead
House of the Dead 2
In The Name Of The King - A Dungeon Siege Tale

Postal

Starting tonight at roughly 11:30 pm, I will subject myself to these films,

one after another.  During which time, I will only stop if my brain starts to

dribble out of my nose (a very real possibility).

During this period, I'm going to regularly tweet as I start each film, and give my
feelings as I reach the end, a more in depth analysis will be put up here shortly.

Wish me luck