AICN has gotten their hands on the new poster for the upcoming Nicholas Cage movie Knowing. The movie directed by Alex Proyas, who has also directed I,Robot, The Crow and Dark City is a thriller based on a story by Proyas and Stuart Hazeldine. The basic plot premise from the Wikipedia entry on the movie is the following:
"A professor (Cage) finds that the contents of a time capsule at his son's elementary school makes predictions of the future that have come true. The predictions lead the teacher to believe the world is ending, and that he and his son are involved in the apocalypse."
I like most of what Alex Proyas has done so far in his career; The Crow and Dark City are both worthy member of my top 30 movies of all time list. I, Robot was stupid but well made and alot more fun then I though it would be. This could be good, however the plot premise makes me cringe and I am not a huge fan of what I have seen in the trailers thus far. This poster does look pretty cool though. Knowing opens March 20th, 2009.
This is going to be weekly Friday evening post concerning what I will be listening to during the upcoming weekend. This will help give my extremely huge audience a good idea of what kind of music I listen to. Note: Some of you may know that I actually co-host a Saturday Metal for the Masses radio show on WIUX radio for Indiana University(99.1FM, www.wiux.com), most of these choices will be a good indication of what might be played on the radio show that weekend.
BEHOLD
After the Burial - "Rareform" All Shall Perish - "Awaken the Dreamers" Amon Amarth - "Twilight of the Thunder God" The Banner - "Frailty" Belphegor - "Bondage Goat Zombie" Beneath the Massacre - "Dystopia" Bison B.C. - "Quiet Earth" Dagoba - "Face the Colossus" Dead Kennedys - "Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegatables" Genghis Tron - "Board Up the House" GZA - "Liquid Swords" Gojira - "The Way of All Flesh" Haste the Day - "Dreamer" The Melvins - "Stoner Witch" Misery Index - "Traitors" Municipal Waste - "The Art of Partying" Mustasch - "Latest Version of Truth" Rise Against - "Appeal to Reason" This Will Destroy You - "This Will Destroy You" Trivium - "Shogun" Unearth - 'The March"
I really don't like Brett Ratner. I don't like the movies he makes, he ruins them. I don't like the franchises he creates, he ruins them. I really don't like the way he is so god damn smug about the fact that he makes some truly awful movies whose only purpose is to make a boat load of money from misguided and misinformed movie goers. /Film is reporting that Brett Ratner is in talks to direct a 100 million dollar reboot of the Conan fantasy action film franchise. This report along with this nugget of joy pretty much solidifies my extreme dislike for this man.
How does he always manage to slither his ass into amazing film adaptations and positions of geek power? Seriously...it started for me when he ruined all of the previous hard work of Bryan Singer and the X-Men films. The Last Stand was terrible, there was too many characters and it's like he deliberately wanted to piss fans off by axing two characters that didn't need to die! There was no reasoning behind it aside from the fact that Jean Grey was really really pissed off. That's it, dunzo, axed, murdered, killed. Fuck. I'm not even going to go into how bad Rush Hour 3(not to mention the whole series) is. Then the rumor that he is in the lead for the director's chair on a God of War game to film adaptation. This shit has gone too far. You will not get away with ruining one of my favorite game franchises of the past few years. If David Jaffe had any sense he would punt your ass out on the curb and go grab someone that actually has vision and understanding of source material.
You know what I dislike the most about Brett Ratner? The fact that I can not hate him as a director. I can't only because I actually have enjoyed one of his movies, not only that but I own it. Red Dragon was pretty awesome, you really can't even tell that a weiner like Brett Ratner directed it. It's not as good as Manhunter, but it did it's job of being equally creepy and thrilling. Shit, I didn't even know he directed an actual good film until I was randomly surfing imdb a year ago. On top of all of this if he in fact does make God of War and Conan adaptations, I am going to have to see them. That makes me mad that I feel like I have to be forced to watch a movie because of the source material. The same thing happened with Star War Episode II, that movie sucked but I had to watch it in order to watch the third one. Please someone pull him out of these rumors.
Now you are saying to yourself. Well shit Tyler, who would you get to do these adaptations? Funny you should ask, because I have an answer for you. I would love to see a Conan reboot made by Ridley Scott. Think about it, Gladiator but with monsters and creatures and fantasy settings. Tell me that would not be awesome as hell to see. God of War is tough decision really, my first thought would be David Fincher honestly. The guy hasn't really gotten to an epic action film yet(Alien 3 was meh not to mention the opposite of epic) and I think his obscene planning skills along with his absurd attention to detail would make a fantastic action film with the an interesting and epic mythological back drop as presented in the game.
Here's GZ's great review of the Puzzle Quest game that you can find on multiple consoles. I just recently purchased Puzzle Quest for the Sony PSP after months of great word of mouth and pressure from my friends to try it out. They claimed that it's a great new style of game with an interesting mesh of RPG and Puzzle style game elements. I saw it at Best Buy for a few bucks and figured what the hell let's give it a shot finally. I'd have to agree with most of the praise it's been getting. The gameplay is truly unique, I have never played anything like it. I think of it as a cross between an RPG and Bejewelled, which i know might sound stupid, but the guys at D3 pull it off remarkably well.
The whole idea of the game is you can pick your main character from one of 4-5 different classes and you pretty much go on a pretty generic sword and sorcery type of journey. But really it wasn't the story that really grabbed ahold of me, it was the aforementioned puzzle elements mixed with RPG battles that really makes me want to play this game for hours on end. The game is pretty easy to figure out after about an hour or so of playing. With that said the game is extremely long, especially for a puzzle game, by RPG standards its about a normal length.
OK, so riddle me this, what is the point of the extra characters that tag along with you on this journey? I have gotten a few so far and they literally add nothing to the game besides dialogue and plot development. I read in the manual that these guys are supposed to do something in battle depending on who's in the party, but I have seen no difference in the way the battles turn out or happen. I don;t know if this a bug in the game, but it's a pretty massive one in that it renders that part of the game entirely useless and my guess is that it will come back to haunt later on.
Why? Because this game is hard as shit. Literally harder then week old shit. I either suck really really bad or this game is really that fucking hard. The computer seems to know exactly what is coming next as far as the jewels and skulls and all the other shit. Seriously there are times where I do not get to do anything for 10 minutes because the computer sits there and gets extra moves from 4 of a kinds for freakin ever. It's the same as playing pool with a professional, once someone is on a roll you will lose without ever actually playing the god damn game. This infuriates me, I don't think i have ever been so pissed off at a game in my life. It's insanely difficult, but that's part of the allure of the game, there really isn't any penalty for getting your ass kicked every time you pick the game up. It tricks you into still playing the game even after you just claimed you would put a baby's head on a pike if you don't win this time around.
Just writing about it pisses me off.
3/5
Good: Great and interesting gameplay, the music is awesome. Bad: Extreme difficulty curve along with random noticeable bugs Ugly: Orcs
I saw that over at /Film The Incredible Hulk DVD specifications have been announced along with what I assume is a tentative release date. This is a DVD release that I for one am extremely excited about. I enjoyed the hell out of this movie and it surprised me. It surprised me because of the absolute mediocrity of Ang Lee's version and I wasn't quite sold on Ed Norton as Banner/Hulk. Needless to say this version has little to nothing to do with Hulk. Sure, there are a few nods and pokes at the previous adaptation, however the creators completely make this film it's own beast. Norton is great, Tim Roth is amazing and the writing is so much better then expected. It does have some pacing issues and some of the dialogue can be on the corny side, but I find the movie extremely fun, I had a blast watching the movie. Most of this is due to the great action sequences created by Louis Leterrier and cinematographer Peter Menzies Jr. Everything from the college action set to the special effects filled finale was well shot and well handled.
I want to speak for a second about the thing I think I liked the most about the movie. What Marvel has done with interweaving all of the recent movies together using various characters and nods to the other "Avengers" is absolutely genius, they finally got some great directors who share their visions and have some great ideas about how to handle the all encompassing Marvel universe. I am of course talking about the special cameo appearance of another Marvel character, I won't spoil it for anyone who's not seen the movie, but needless to say you see it coming but are still cheering like mad when it happens. I've heard that there may be a special sequence included on the DVD that was excluded from the theatrical release involving the appearance of another Marvel character that further connects this film universe.
The Incredible Hulk DVD is set to release on October 21st, 2008.
So ComingSoon.net is reporting that there will be a new Dragonball movie trailer attached to the upcoming film adaptation of Max Payne. The movie looks cheesy as hell from the few pictures that I have seen released thus far. I don't really know what to think about this one yet. Could it be actually entertaining, sctrach that, I know it will be entertaining, but could it actually be good? All I know is I pretty much loathe the guy playing Goku(yeah I watched the series when I was younger, sue me), he looks silly. On a related note Max Payne looks awesome. Dragonball is scheduled for release on April 3rd, 2009.
Bleszinski's brain. Please if you are going to say something is going to be longer than the original then make it longer than the original, don't say "it's going to be longer" and make it 7 hours as opposed to 6 hours, which is roughly the amount of time it took me to beat the first game. To be fair though, I suck at video games and played it on the easiest difficulty.
I love love love the idea behind making the Gears of War series, by all means this should be one of my most loved and cherished games. I mean he took the futuristic 'roided out style of all the sci fi action games coming out and added a Saving Private Ryan cinematic "brothers in arms" feel. See here for more information.
However, when I played the game I wasn't thinking, "damn this is a great game", I was thinking "damn this would make a great 2 hour movie", a scifi epic of massive proportions. And that was the issue when I beat Gears of War, sure it was fun, bloody as hell, but as far as games are concerned it didn't really add all that much to the genre. The cinematic feel was a welcome addition to gaming but in reality it's being done better by other people, such as Bioshock, Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid. I know I am going to get hated for this, but GOW was such an average and short game, I'd rather watch it again then play it again. So my wish to Cliff, is please make the badass game that we know you can make, it's ok to be cinematic but try and knock us on our asses with innovative gameplay as well that will make me come back for seconds.
