Too obscure?

It seems that Sir Anthony Hopkins (Silence of the Lambs, Remains of the Day, Howards of the End) will play Odin in Kenneth Branagh’s Thor. While awesome, I am somewhat disheartened that Brian Blessed did not get the role.

Now, Blessed would be the absolute perfect choice for a loud or blustery Odin. I’m sure Hopkins can do loud, but I see him as more of a spare actor. Look at his performances. Even Hannibal Lector is a subdued psychopath.

Did I just write that?

Anyway, I can’t say that Hopkins is a bad choice. I do wish, though, that Blessed had got some love in this one. He’s just so perfect as Odin. And he can do subdued. Just watch his Exeter in Branagh’s Henry V. Really substantial.

In any case, I’m still going to be interested to see how Branagh deals with the Thor/Donald Blake split. For a while, I was expecting him to double cast—give us an actor for Blake and one for Thor. Now I’m wondering if they’ll Doctor Manhattan him and CGI up a bulked out Thor.

Just not the blue penis, please.

It seems that Peter Berg is off of Dune. I can’t say that I’m terribly broken up about that. Berg hasn’t shown me any indication that he can take on this canonical work without going Hollywood on it. And yes, “going Hollywood” on it is NOT a good thing. Never a good thing.

The two names that I’ve seen attached to Dune now give me some hope.

Neil Marshall, he of Dog Soldiers and Doomsday, isn’t a bad choice. Much like Peter Jackson before the Lord of the Rings, Marshall has shown real brilliance, even if he has never handled so large a project.

Now I haven’t seen District 9 (when is it coming out on DVD?), but Neill Blomkamp is kind of in the same boat as Marshall. Right now, if the choice were mine, I’d have to go with Marshall just as a known quantity, but Blomkamp has shown he is capable with SF. Neither has done a “big” movie, but neither had Jackson, and that turned out pretty well for everyone involved.

I have to admit to having a soft spot for the David Lynch version of Dune. I actually saw it before I read the novel. I don’t think I would have been as happy with it had I not. The Dune miniseries from the Sci Fi channel was okay, but it didn’t really grip me. Lynch’s Dune had inspired casting. The miniseries had William Hurt, who was great, but no one else really made an impact on me. I really did not like Alec Newman as Paul Atreides. Of course, that’s just me.

In the end, I’d be excited to see another version of Dune. I don’t think we’ll ever get the definitive one. Still, if someone makes it, I’ll likely watch it. Maybe by the time it’s out, I’ll be back to seeing movies in the theatres.

So, I finally get time to write some blog posts, then I forget to post them. That happens when one is writing a post at 7 Am and posting it at 9 PM.

In any case, on my walk in to work today, I switched from listening to podcasts to listening to tunage. Sometimes the desire just hits me. Usually it lights a match on something creative, even if it is not something I could pursue.

Today, while listening to the Crystal Method’s “Legion of Boom,” I came up with a movie conceit. It’s not really an idea and it’s not really a concept, hence: conceit.

Make a modern action/adventure movie with the cast of Firefly/Serenity.

In this movie, the cast would be members of an elite black ops team. Their handler would be only known as the Badger. In thinking about the roles for the group, I got stuck on Adam Baldwin and Alan Tudyk. The reason is that I would want to play with roles, give them something different than what they played in Firefly. However, Adam and Alan do their respective roles so damn well, it would suck to lose out on that.

What I have come up with so far, plot wise, is that there is an abandoned science city near Tura, Siberia. Something has happened there. Something very, very bad. The Russians are deciding what to do about it, and it looks like they’ll maybe nuke it from orbit (just to be sure). An unidentified, high-ranking US official takes a meeting with the Badger to activate the black ops team. The team inserts secretly using a stealth aircraft (on which the serenity name and symbol would be seen!) to investigate. Much badness ensues–I’m thinking werewolves or maybe zombies. Something shootable.

Really original plot, eh? Yeah, like I said, more a conceit than anything else.

Of the characters I already considered, Nathan Fillion would be playing Captain Ray Malcolm, the team’s leader. Morena Baccarin as Sarah, the linguist and second in command. Adam Baldwin would be Sev Janus, a man of uncertain origins, a rough-houser and a psychic. That’s right, a psychic. Jayne gets to play River. Adam Tudyk would be Hobbes, a deadly assassin with a motor-mouth (think a sane and relatively moral Deadpool). Gina Torres would be Zoe Washington, a sniper.

The Badger would be played, of course, by Mark Sheppard. We’d have to get Christina Hendricks in there somewhere.

That’s as far as I got before getting to work. I think it’s kind of a fun exercise, even though it won’t amount to anything. Maybe I can salvage the idea for a kind of modern day dungeon crawl.

The first scene in the movie would look something like this:

1. Interior Bland Office Space type Office
The office is very cluttered and rather small. Papers and books everywhere. The BADGER sits behind the desk. Standing in front of him is the un-named OFFICIAL.

OFFICIAL
There’s a situation we need handled.

BADGER
Yeah. Tura. I know. Nasty business that. We aren’t going to leave it to the Russians? Their territory and all.

OFFICIAL
Listen, Mr. . . . Badger?

BADGER taps the name plate on the desk, facing the official. It reads “R. BADGER”

OFFICIAL
Fine. Mr. Badger. Intel indicates the Russians are going to clean sweep the area. All evidence will be gone. We need to know what was happening there.

BADGER
I doubt it’s a moral imperative, but I’m up for Queen & Country and all that. You give us this mission, and we own it. Your boss told you that, right?

OFFICIAL
You’re a gun, Mr. Badger. We point and pull the trigger. What the bullet does after that is a matter of physics.

BADGER
Well put. You were listening at the briefing. Fine. We’ll take it. Expect the report in 48 hours.

OFFICIAL
In 48 hours, that area is going to be a radioactive cinder.

BADGER
And we’ll all be home and snug in our beds, no one the wiser. Good day.

The OFFICIAL stands looking at BADGER for a moment, then turns and leaves. BADGER sips at his coffee for a moment. He takes the nameplate and tosses it in his bag. He rises, takes his bag and leaves the office.

2. Interior Cubicle Farm type space, just outside office door
BADGER slides the name plate (which reads CRISIS MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT) off the door. Underneath is another name plate (Tom Winchester, Intelligence Analyst). Two men rise from desks at the cubicles just beyond the office.  These are MALCOLM and JANUS.

BADGER
You get all that?

JANUS
(nods) Like an open book.

BADGER
Are we getting fucked over again?

JANUS
Absolutely.

MALCOLM
We’re in the wrong line of work.

BADGER
Only if you’re making plans for retirement.

It looks like, barring a disaster–which is always possible!–that the Ottawa Warband will reassemble. We won’t be continuing the True20 Viking campaign. While many of the original players will return, I’ve got something else I’ve promised to run that has the majority excited.

I got a review PDF copy of Mutants & Masterminds 2nd edition from Green Ronin. After a quick read through, I went and bought the book. I’m going to use M&M to run a Mundus Novit campaign using the Osiris Files. This is going to do a few things–test drive M&M and the Osiris Files, and hopefully publicize Mundus Novit.

While the Ottawa Warband podcast doesn’t have a huge audience, it has some. The actual play of the Osiris Files can help GMs of both those products and Mundus Novit to get an idea of some of the things that can be done. It won’t be comprehensive, of course. This is going to be a muted supers game, one without capes and masks. Mundus Novit can do that, it can do outright supers, it can also do other stuff, like espionage.

We’ll see how things turn out. I’m excited to run this, and I hope the players enjoy it. Perhaps we’ll return to the Viking True20 campaign in the future. Perhaps something else will strike my fancy.  Based on past history, the most likely event will be the collapse of the gaming group and other dry period for RPing.

As sometimes happens when I’m walking to work (which I am, once again, after 37 glorious weeks of parental leave–thank you to the socialist paradise), I was listening to a tune, thinking about gaming scenarios. As has happened before, it segued into thinking about a story/screenplay.

Now some of you may have heard my riff on the Qalashar Device from Gen Con, which I entitled “Qalashar Dogs.” I took the facility from the Qalashar Deviceand dropped in a CIA operative suffering from lycanthropy. In any case, I was thinking about how that could work as a story and/or novel. It morphed in my thoughts, and when it got to the movie screen in my head, a dramatic shift took place.

If you want a team working in the Hindu Kush region stretching from Afghanistan into Pakistan, and you want that team to move around unnoticed, you probably don’t want a bunch of Caucasians. You probably want some people with a bit of colour. People who could really blend in.

Now, in my “movie,” the team isn’t Pashtun or Tajik or anything like that. They would all speak the local languages and dialects, but they would be assembled from around the world and chosen because they stand out less than white guys. One reason for the conceit is so that I can cast specific actors.

Well, at least I can once the script is done and the financing is secured. Translation: only in my daydreams.

Another conceit is that in the script, they would only be given code-names. That is because once the parts are cast, the character would then be given the same ethnic background as the actor. That way, while the idea is that these operators could infiltrate the area, they are–just as the actors are–“playing” an ethnicity.

I have no idea if any of these guys could fool an actual local, but I think it would work for a movie.

So, the cast.

Faran Tahir, who was such an awesome presence in theStar Trek movie, would be the Captain. He’s the leader of a special operations team known only as “Troop 7.” He would be a Delta operative of Pakistani descent but born and raised in the US.

Saïd Taghmaoui, whom I first noted in Three Kings would be Ghost, the recon expert. His character would be French, but of Moroccan descent, and a special forces operative from the 1st Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment.

Cliff Curtis is the best of the bunch for me. Not because he’s the best actor–though he is phenomenal–but because he is a New Zealander who actually does play a lot of ethnic roles. I noticed him first in Three Kings (it was a very good movie), and then caught him in a great role in a mediocre movie,Deep Rising. Deep Rising really is mediocre, but the cast makes it a great watch. In any case, Mr. Curtis would be Smoke, a Maori NZ SAS sniper.

While many may know Sendhil Ramamurthy fromHeroes, I know him from Ultimate Force, the SAS drama from the UK. Again, serendipity, as he could easily play an SAS operator of Tamil descent. He would be Doc, the medic and tech expert.

I would actually like a bigger team, but I don’t know if it would work cinematically. I think the excess characters would get lost in the shuffle. As I envision the story, after a prologue scene where the team rescues a CIA operative and the crew of the aircraft he was in, they are called in to rescue another CIA operative, this time from a downed helicopter. And this time, they must take along a couple of CIA spooks as the “package” is infected with a virulent pathogen. I’m thinking the spooks are a doctor/scientist type, totally sincere, and the usual Special Activities Division tough guy, who intends to erase any evidence of the “package” once she/he/it has been secured–and that includes Troop 7.

There’s a trailer up for the anticipated action extravaganza, the Expendables. Now this is supposedly a promo trailer, used to sell the movie to distributors, so it’s not the same as a movie trailer designed to draw in audiences.

Still. Meh.

Granted, it’s cool to see all these guys working together, and the fight scenes seem okay. The thing is, I’ve heard this described as the ultimate 80s action movie. That is actually apt. The action scenes look like they were filmed in the 1980s. They seem a little pedestrian, kind of reheated. Someone kept this movie in the fridge and just threw it in the microwave before serving it up to you.

Who knows, maybe it’s better than it appears. I doubt I’ll see this in the theatre. Then again, I see so very, very little in the theatres.

This review is from the Accidental Survivors forum.

Next runner up in the long line of stylized zombie movies is Zombieland.  This fun little movies stars Jessie Eisenberg as our focal point and narrator, Woody Harrelson as our ass kicking, gun toting, one liner dropping hero and our two not so distressed damsels Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin.

The movie takes place just after the Zombie Apocalypse in which a variant of mad cow disease drives a majority of the population into flesh eating zombies and the other half of the population to dead.   It’s an action/dark comedy more heavy on the action and gore as opposed to say Shaun of the Dead which is more heavy on the comedy.

The movie trucks along in typical zombie fashion where the heroes mus search for resources fend of zombies and deal with the stress of the other survivors in the group.  It’s nothing really new or inventive but it’s a hell of a lot of fun.  There’s really not much else to say.  The movie looks good, has it’s own style, the actors look like they were having a blast and the whole thing will keep you entertained from start to finish.

It’s a great popcorn flick for sure and it’s one I’ll gladly watch again when it comes out on DVD.  Overall it’s not quite as good as Shaun of the Dead, but I think that really comes down to personal tastes as to where your sense of comedy vs action lie.

I highly recommend this movie to fans of the genre.  If you think the trailers look good then you won’t be disappointed.

4 out of 5 a bullet to the head.

A pic has surfaced of Zoe Saldana as Aisha in the Losers. There are a few things that this picture tells me.

1) Zoe Saldana is crazy HOT. Of course, I already knew that.

2) The writer of the article either didn’t do his homework, or the movie changes Aisha’s background from Afghanistan/Pakistan to South America. If the character is South American, are they going to bother to explain the name, or just assume the viewing public are slack-jawed yokels who can’t discern between Arabic and Spanish (maybe Portuguese)?

3) They’ve got the look of the character down.

Personally, I kind of expected something a little . . . I don’t know exactly how to say this, . . . rougher? While Aisha in the comics is supposed to be attractive, she is somewhat masculine. It’s more in her poise and attitude than in her appearance, but it’s there. Not so much with Ms. Saldana.

Now I’m not saying she’s poorly cast. I think it was a casting coup. I’m eager to see how she’ll approach the role. The thing is, that smile is anything but badass.

In any case, along with the other photo, this makes me comfortable with the look of the characters. But are we going to get a decent adaptation or will they shit all over the source material? Maybe somewhere in between? It is Hollywood—they have a somewhat noticeable hatred of source material.