Fiendish Horror
At this point, there is a good chance you’ve already heard or read about Gareth Edwards’ ‘Monsters.’ After the impact it made at the last Cannes festival, the amount of coverage it has received from pretty much everywhere is pretty staggering.
Before we add fuel to the hype-fire, it has been pointed out many times now that the focus of the film is on the relationship between the two main characters. It isn’t an FX extravaganza with giant action sequences. So, hopefully that diffused some of the hype, but we’re still pretty excited to see the film regardless.
The limited theatrical release was just announced for Oct 29th. Magnet will distribute. In celebration of the theatrical announcement, here is a small collection of the coverage so far:
Plot
Six years ago NASA discovered the possibility of alien life within our solar system. A probe was launched to collect samples, but crashed upon re-entry over Central America. Soon after new life forms began to appear there and half of Mexico was quarantined as an “Infected Zone.”
Today, the American and Mexican military still struggle to contain “the creatures”… The story begins when a US journalist agrees to escort a shaken American tourist through the infected zone in Mexico to the safety of the US border.
Trailer:
You might recognize Whitney Able, who starred opposite Amber Heard in the surprisingly fresh slasher ‘All the Boys Love Mandy Lane’ -
Adobe Showcase – Gareth Edwards An in-depth technical overview
/Film: How Gareth Edwards Shot ‘Monsters’ On An Incredibly Low Budget (Video) Best Buy’s Making-Of Featurette
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1470827/
Facebook: A ton of links collected by the community
FirstShowing.net’s Cannes Review
Typically when we blog one of our top 20, 25 or 50 lists, Casey or I will post the top locations on the site based on the hits each article has gotten since its creation. We thought we’d do …
For sixty years, the mysterious black-clad figure known as the Poe Toaster would make an appearance at the Old Westminster Burial Ground on the anniversary of author/poet Edgar Allan Poe’s b…
The winter months are truly treacherous ones for those who sail the waters of the “Graveyard of the Pacific”; a section of the Pacific Ocean that runs along the western coast of North Americ…
This Friday will mark 19 years since the suicide of Jeremy Wade Delle. Delle, a student at Richardson High School in Richardson, Texas, took his own life in front of his fellow students in t…
To help you kick off this auspicious New Year right, we’ve got twenty of the biggest and best RPG products on our site on sale for just $10! These are all “big ticket” books that normally sell for at least $20 or more (some for a LOT more), but we all want to jump start the gamer economy here at the start of the year, and you can help us by taking advantage of this unique and amazing sale!
“Hey, wait… there’s more than twenty products on this list!”
Well, yeah. You got us. The publishers thought this was such an amazingly cool idea, they committed more books than we asked for, and we just didn’t have the heart to choose. So you’re really getting “Twenty-Plus for $10!” Do us a favor and don’t tell the bosses, OK?
Some of the titles included in this sale are Geist: the Sin-Eaters from White Wolf, Mouse Guard from Archaia Studio Press, Grimm from Fantasy Flight Games, Etherscope from Goodman Games and Mutant City Blues from Pelgrane Press.
Twenty for $10 RPG Sale at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.
As the official source for information regarding the development and eventual production of a feature film based on Eclipse Phase, More Nachos Entertainment is pleased to announce that EclipsePhaseMovie.com is now online.
Fans of the role-playing game and those anticipating the film, may now find updates on the script and production status – and soon read blog entries from the producers and writers as well as casting choices. A forum is dedicated to discussing everything about the film and game. Additional areas are dedicated to the roleplaying game, about the production staff and more features to come.
There is also now a dedicated Twitter feed: @EclipsePhasePic
Eclipse Phase is set in the future, but in a time that is closer than we want to believe. Earth has been destroyed and humanity stands on the cusp of a new age where humankind has merged with technology. This new transhumanity has colonized Mars and the solar system, though it remains divided between repressive hypercorp-backed regimes and techno-anarchist strongholds. Biotechnology allows humans to repair or replace their bodies, while artificial intelligence has grown to staggering levels with cognitive science and nanotechnology, making uploading the human mind possible. Transferring the mind digitally across great distances is now the preferred means of travel.
More Nachos Entertainment acquired the rights to the critically acclaimed role-playing game Eclipse Phase in July 2009. Game veterans Rob Boyle and Davidson Cole are actively developing the feature film script with the first draft expected to be complete in early 2010.
More Nachos Entertainment (MNE) officially launched in June of 2009 with its acquisition of Eclipse Phase.
MNE was founded by Stephen Marinaccio, film maker and gamer who has worked on over 45 feature film and television projects. MNE aims to bring great films to the screen, engaging video games to the masses and well told stories to the Los Angeles stage.
More Nachos Entertainment is based in Los Angeles, California. For more information visit www.morenachos.com.
Combining Archaia’s longstanding commitment to producing high-quality hardcover graphic novels and Roddenberry’s goal to produce sophisticated, intelligent and entertaining science fiction in the tradition of Star Trek, the companies announced today they will publish a deluxe Days Missing hardcover that collects all five issues of the critically acclaimed mini-series plus a host of extra features, available in February 2010.
The Days Missing hardcover is available for pre-order now through comic retailers and online outlets like Amazon.com (ISBN 1-932386-84-X).
Days Missing tells the stories of a mysterious being known as “The Steward.” His ability to literally “fold” days of time has allowed him to secretly remove critical days from our shared history that have forever changed the course of mankind…or so he thinks. In these missing days, The Steward battles Frankenstein, the Spanish conquistadors and artificial lifeforms, among other history-shaping forces.
Archaia and Roddenberry Productions brought together four all-star creative teams to each work on standalone, reader-friendly issues of Days Missing that tie into the overall mini-series story arc. The writer/artist teams include: Phil Hester (Firebreather, The Darkness, Green Arrow) and Frazer Irving (Batman and Robin, Seven Soldiers of Victory) for issues 1 and 5; David Hine (Batman: Battle for the Cowl) and Chris Burnham (X-Men: Divided We Stand) for issue 2; Ian Edginton (Stormwatch) and Lee Moder (Legion of Super-Heroes) for issue 3; and Matz (The Killer) and Hugo Petrus (Wolverine: First Class) for issue 4. The legendary Dale Keown (The Incredible Hulk, Pitt) provided the main covers to each issue.
The extra features in the Days Missing hardcover include:
• A foreword written by the legendary Warren Ellis, award-winning creator of graphic novels such as Fell, Ministry of Space, Planetary and Transmetropolitan.
• A gallery featuring all 16 covers of the five issues.
• A collectible poster on the reverse side of the dust jacket, joining together all of Frazer Irving’s complete chase covers to Days Missing.
• Interviews with all of the writers and Roddenberry Productions’ Trevor Roth , creator of Days Missing.
• Revelation of the secret code contained in the Days Missing logo.
• A stat sheet of The Steward, plus a tour of his library.
• The evolution of a comic page, from script to pencils, inks and colors.
Here is what the critics are saying about Days Missing:
“One of the best things that came out this year.”
– Blair Butler, G4’s Fresh Ink Online
“Innovative and cool.”
– Brendan McGuirk, Newsarama.com
“A rare treat.”
– Christopher Baggett, TheHomeWorld.net
“Poetic…beautiful…impressive.”
– Sara Lima, ComicVine.com
About Archaia
Archaia has built an unparalleled reputation for producing meaningful content that perpetually transforms minds. With a slate including such popular Eisner-Award winning titles as Mouse Guard and The Killer, as well as Awakening, Gunnerkrigg Court, Robotika, Killing Pickman, Artesia and the Publisher’s latest additions of Titanium Rain, God Machine, Roddenberry Productions’ Days Missing, The Jim Henson Company library and Mr. Murder Is Dead and Lucid with Before the Door Pictures, Archaia has become synonymous with quality content.
For more information on Archaia or any Archaia titles please visit www.Archaia.com.
Introduction
This review is unlikely to be of a great deal of use to most people who will have seen the word ‘Bioware’ associated with it, ignored the EA also associated with it, had a happy accident in their pants and bought it anyway. For those of you who’ve been a little bit slower off the mark or have hung back unsure whether to buy it, without having the money spare or who are curious without being curious enough to spend money, hopefully this will offer something useful.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, Dragon Age: Origins is the kick off of a new CRPG franchise for Bioware, divorced from their D&D associations (Baldur’s Gate) and that of their old game engine. Dragon’s Age has been sold as a glorious, sexy, blood-spattered romp that tears down preconceptions about fantasy games and worlds, plays about with them and offers a more mature and visceral entertainment ’sausage’ at the end of it all.
The version I’m reviewing is the PS3 one, though I would image the console versions are largely the same and any differences are more likely to be found in the PC version.
Story
The story is fairly standard fantasy tale, but with a darker twist. I’m almost inclined to assert that Dragon Age is, in fact, a horror game rather than a fantasy game per se, just to stir up some controversy but that wouldn’t be entirely accurate. Your character is the hero of a grand tale that sketches out the world – and most particularly the land of Ferelden, which is threatened by a terrible event called a ‘blight’, wherein an arch demon (in the form of a dragon) brings forth an army of darkspawn (pretty much orcs) to the surface and lays waste – unstoppably – to everything for miles with no purpose other than destruction. You gather an unlikely band of heroes and… yadda yadda yadda, lots of side quests, build up experience and ultimately save the day. Huzzah!
The main storyline is pretty hackneyed, standard fantasy fare for the most part, you find yourself calling out some of the plot twists and events like you’d call out lines from a favourite film you’ve seen a million times… “Gordon’s alive?!” …and it never quite plays with your expectations enough to shock or compel you. The far more interesting sides to the story are all the little side plots, schemes and favours for the other members of your party, but you’ll have to work hard at buttering them up to get to all those.
Gameplay
The trailers and clips initially suggested a fairly free-flowing and cinematic fighting experience, but that wasn’t the vibe I got from the combat at all. You have your basic fighting moves and then you have access to special moves, accessed as you level up and then slotted into your remaining action buttons (on consoles this means you can only ever have quick access to six of these powers at one time, I don’t know if this is the same on the PC version). This isn’t free-flowing and cinematic, much like a D&D CRPG it’s a matter of picking a target and leaning on the basic attack button, occasionally triggering a special ability.
The two games that Dragon Age brought to mind while playing were Final Fantasy 12 (with the tactics selection for your companions) and any MMORPG of your choice for the combat itself. Countdown timers on special attacks and timing management definitely brought World of Warcraft more to mind than anything cinematic or immersive.
Otherwise everything was largely as you’d expect, though after playing Mass Effect the old style dialogue trees felt a little old fashioned, as did much of the rest of the game! I did spot a couple of minor bugs, characters appearing in strange locations with dialogue that belonged with them being somewhere else, but overall there wasn’t too much problem with that.
Atmosphere
The game does create its atmosphere fairly well. The graphics hold it back from really drawing you in completely and the animations could have been better but the dialogue is fairly faultless and it’s worth mixing your party around a lot from encounter to encounter just to hear the banter between the various members of your party. Morrigan’s scathing wit is particularly well done and I think only Sten (a qunari, a token new warrior/honour race) ever caused her to stumble.
The world is brought to life but the settlements can’t help but feel a bit empty most of the time, in a game world that includes the crowded, busy and bustling cities of GTA and Assassin’s Creed everything feels a bit staid, dead and dull in the towns of Dragon Age with people standing around waiting to deliver a couple of lines of dialogue or feed you a quest chain.
The game unquestionably has a deep set of background lore and material, on paper it’s very well realised and the story of it certainly draws you in but this is a computer game, not a novel, not a tabletop RPG and while the material is there, is weighty, engaging and interesting the game fails to adequately convey it. It tells you rather than showing you – with a couple of exceptions such as in the Mage’s Tower where you get a first hand lesson on how dangerous magic is.
Graphics
For a new game on a next gen console the graphics are unforgivably crap. I’ll often go off on one about how graphics aren’t all important and gameplay should be king but, really, this looks like a PC game from a few years ago. The textures don’t bare up to close examination, many of the buildings and streets look flat and if you compare it with – even fairly modest – other titles it doesn’t hold up. In my opinion it doesn’t even match up to their older game, Mass Effect.
The characters look somewhat wooden, their motions aren’t quite natural and flowing enough and the underwear makes the character models look even worse during the ’sex’ scenes!
Conclusion
Dragon Age: Origins is a good game, despite the average score I’ve given it and it lays a solid foundation on which to build a franchise but, after loving Mass Effect so much I was left disappointed by Dragon Age. Perhaps, Mass Effect being SF, there were no preconceptions or requirements to the game world and they could play around with what they were making, leading to a superior product. With Dragon Age, despite playing with fantasy preconceptions it never quite paid off, just as the sex scenes never quite pay off. In a blog post while I was playing still I referred to this – somewhat crudely- as: “All boob and no nipple” and this does make a fairly good metaphor for what it is that ails this game.
There’s sex, but not really, it’s neither tender nor titillating. The dwarves are different, but not different enough. The elves are different, but not different enough. The qunari are ‘new’, but klingons with cornrows aren’t really new. All the standard pseudo-medieval claptrap is there, just not necessarily quite where you’d normally expect to find it. Dragon Age tries, but it always stops just short of being truly brilliant.
A sequel, with more effort on the graphics and world and pushing things just that little bit further, could be a truly great game. Roll on Mass Effect 2!
Score
Style: 2
Substance: 4
Overall: A high 3.
Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough
VEINS is a supernatural thriller that combines the fast-paced prose of veteran short story author Lawrence C. Connolly with the soulful character portraits of Star E. Olson.
Fleeing from what should have been a perfect crime, four crooks in a black Mustang race into the Pennsylvania highlands. On the backseat, a briefcase full of cash. On their tail, a tattooed madman who wants them dead.
The driver calls himself Axle. A local boy, he knows the landscape, the coal-hauling roads and steep trails that lead to the perfect hideout: the crater of an abandoned mine. But Axle fears the crater. Terrible things happened there. Things that he has spent years trying to forget.
Enter Kwetis, the nightflyer, a specter from Axle’s ancestral past. Part memory, part nightmare, Kwetis has planned a heist of his own. And soon Axle, his partners in crime, and their pursuer will learn that their arrival at the mine was foretold long ago . . . and that each of them is a piece of a plan devised by the spirits of the Earth.
VEINS Prologue
The second time Kwetis visited her, she found him sitting outside the door of her trailer park home, wings folded against his back, clawed feet curled over the rim of a cliff. At first she wasn’t sure which unnerved her more: seeing that Kwetis had returned to western Pennsylvania, or discovering that her front yard now ended at a sandstone precipice.
Kwetis looked back at her, head rotating to peer between his wings. “I’ve come to thank you,” he said. “You did well, Yeyestani.”
Yeyestani was an old word. It meant teacher. Kwetis was flattering her, which meant he had returned to ask another favor.
He stepped away from the ledge, walking on legs that bent backward at the knees, approaching until he stood just outside her door.
She didn’t invite him in.
“Your friend performed well, Yeyestani.”
“My friend?”
“Johnny Redwing.”
“The Okwe boy?” She frowned. “He’s no friend of mine.”
“Still, he listened when you told him to take the job at the Frieburg estate. He did as you said. That was good.”
“I heard he only lasted a week up there.”
“Ten days.”
“I heard they fired him.”
“That’s right. Mr. Frieburg fired him.”
“So how’s that good?”
Kwetis’s eyes shimmered. An image rose within them, showing Johnny Redwing lying atop Mrs. Frieburg, riding her hard.
“So that’s it? That’s the reason you wanted him up there?”
“Not the whole reason.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yes, but that’s because for you it’s just beginning. Understanding comes later.” He stepped closer. “You are helping our oohaate,” he said.
“Oohaate?”
“Yes. Do you know that word?”
She had forgotten much of the old tongue, but a few words remained. Oohaate. She remembered her grandmother talking about that. Oohaate. The spirit path. The way that must be followed. It had no equivalent in English, though fate was an approximation.
“So I’m helping you cut a trail into the future?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve come back to thank me? That’s all?”
Kwetis leaned closer. “No.” His face crackled. “There’s more.” He touched her shoulder. His palm was hard, cold. His skin smoldered without heat. “I came to thank you . . . and warn you.”
“About what?”
His eyes shimmered. “Your grandson Matthew is going to die.”
Her heart skipped. Matthew was twenty-two, healthy, recently married.
Kwetis rubbed her shoulder. “But through his death, you will gain a son.”
“Me? A son?” She was seventy-four. “You’re joking.”
“I never joke. Jokes are for humans. I speak only what is, what will be. When Matthew dies, you will raise his son.”
“But Matthew doesn’t have a son.”
“No. Not yet. But he will.”
She felt disoriented. He was telling her too much too fast.
“Here,” Kwetis said. “This will help.” He took his hand from her shoulder and stepped aside.
In the distance, beyond the sandstone ledge, the landscape came alive with roaring machines: coal trucks, conveyors, dozers, draglines.
“Tell me what you see,” Kwetis said. “Tell me if you recognize this place.”
“I recognize it,” she said.
It was the Windslow Surface Mine, a wounded valley that had once been pine-covered highlands. Machines had bulldozed the forest, diverted streams, and cut into the mountain until all that remained was a deep gash rimmed by a curved wall of sheared-off rock to the north and east, pine forest to the south and west. In between was a low wasteland of machine-gouged earth. The locals called it the crater.
But though it was familiar to her, it did not belong where she saw it now, a few dozen feet from her doorstep.
“I’ve moved it for you, Yeyestani.”
“For me?”
“So I can show you another piece of the oohaate.”
Her grandson Matthew worked at Windslow Mine, hauling coal along the ledge roads.
“I’ll show you,” Kwetis said. “I’ll show you how he dies. But you mustn’t try changing it. If you do, the oohaate will fail.”
She watched a line of coal trucks ascending the face of the highwall, climbing a road that wound like a screw thread along the curve of vertical rock. Her grandson drove the lead vehicle, and even though she couldn’t see him through the sun-glared windows, she nonetheless recognized his youthful vigor in the moving machine, as if his essence permeated the metal, radiating down into the steady motion of the massive wheels.
“Keep watching,” Kwetis said. “This is how it happens.”
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the air quivered, trembling with a low-pitched sound, like the sustained ringing of a gong. Seconds passed. The ground stirred, vibrating beneath her. The mine, she thought, the realization coming the way insights sometimes do in dreams. The sound is coming from the mine. The rocks are singing.
To the east, the highwall trembled, its face shivering as the ringing welled into a jagged roar.
Then it happened.
The screw-thread road folded, crumbling beneath the trucks. Wheels lost traction as rock sheared away. And then, slowly at first, the convoy fell. . . .
By the time the full force of the thunder reached her, a quarter of the hillside had calved into the crater.
“Lose a grandson,” Kwetis said. “Gain a son.”
They were inside now, which meant that Kwetis could stay as long as he wanted. It was bad luck to ask a spirit to leave your home once you had invited him inside.
She realized now, studying him as he sat across from her, that he had changed since his first visit. The last time he had been more aloof, less personable. Perhaps this was a different Kwetis, a younger manifestation of the timeless spirit. According to the old stories, such things were possible.
The living room occupied the center of her trailer, positioned beyond a pressboard kitchen and ending at a darkened hallway. The hallway led to her bedroom, and from it came the sounds of her nightstand radio, the one she always played while she slept. She was sleeping now, but that didn’t matter. Her awareness was here, in the living room, with Kwetis.
She leaned forward, looking into his eyes. “Tell me about him,” she said. “Tell me about my great grandson.”
Kwetis had made himself at home. He sat across from her, wings draping the back of a chair, legs folded beneath him. She had offered him coffee, and he had accepted, the cup sitting beside him now, growing cold.
His gaze turned inward at her mention of the boy. When he spoke, he did so slowly, as if sharing information that was at once vast and personal. “Your grandson will name the boy Alex,” Kwetis said. “But Alex will change the name. He will call himself Axle.”
“Axle? Like on a car?”
“Yes. That’s the way he’ll spell it.”
She pictured the rearranged letters. “He will be a clever child?”
“No.” Kwetis seemed to smile, though in truth his wolfish face lacked the subtleties of human expression. “Not particularly. Not at first. He will require considerable guidance, a lot of teaching.”
“I take it he’ll have an interest in cars.”
“Yes. A big interest. It will be part of the oohaate. Very important.”
“But why will I be the one to raise him? Surely his mother-”
“You will challenge the mother’s right to custody,” Kwetis said. “It will not be easy, but she drinks, and she will drink more after the accident. When you challenge her for the child, she will drink all the time.”
“So maybe we should let her keep the child. Maybe it will help her, keep her from drinking.”
“That doesn’t concern us. The oohaate requires that you gain custody.”
“And after custody. Then what?”
“Then you will teach him the old ways, the language and stories.”
“I’m afraid I’ve forgotten those.”
“You’ll remember. They’re in your blood. Trust your instincts. Old memories are like deep rock, there for the digging.” He spoke with his hands, gentle gestures. “Raise the boy well. When he is nearly grown, I will visit you again.” He leaned forward. “That will be our final meeting, Yeyestani.”
She considered that. How old would she be when an as-yet-unborn child reached his teens?
Life is already too long, she thought, not sure she wanted to go another fifteen, twenty years. She was already weary, bone tired, worn to a nub.
Kwetis took her hand. “You look troubled.”
Down the hall, something stirred: weight shifting against sagging springs. She felt the mattress beneath her shoulders, but tried ignoring it. She must not wake up now. It would be rude, possibly fatal.
“You have doubts,” Kwetis said. “You’re wondering if you will live long enough to raise the child.”
“Will I?”
“Yes.”
“Will I do a good job?”
He paused, his gaze softening. “Yes.” Something moved across his face, a shifting shadow that conveyed a sense of respect and gratitude. He seemed poised to say more, but then he released her hand, unfolded his legs, and headed toward the door.
She followed him down a wooden step and onto a clay path that led past a small chain-link enclosure. The size and shape of a dog kennel, the enclosure held a generator and a large gasoline drum. A sign on the locked gate proclaimed that the contents were property of OSM, Federal Office of Surface Mining:
Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted
A pole rose from the generator, supporting an overhead wire that ran toward a square shack with a boarded window. None of these things-fence, generator, wire, shack-were part of her real world. But she sensed they were important. Otherwise, Kwetis would not have put them in the dream.
He passed them without comment, advancing toward the brink of the now-silent surface mine. The machines were gone.
Windslow Mine, she thought. As it will be in the future: quiet, overgrown, forgotten.
Kwetis stepped toward the crater’s edge and leaned forward, balancing precariously, pointing to the eastern slope where a carpet of trees and grass covered a wedge of collapsed wall: the killing ground as it would appear many years after her grandson’s death.
“Other men will die in the slide,” he said, speaking now with the shifting tension in his wings. He looked ready to fly. “There will be lawsuits, claims of negligence. The company will declare bankruptcy, leaving the workers with nothing while the owners walk away rich.”
She stepped up beside him, letting him know that she wasn’t afraid of the sudden fall. She felt safe in his presence, secure in the assurance that she would live long enough to raise a child who was yet to be born.
“This is the mine as it will be,” Kwetis said. “One day, when your great grandson is nearly grown, you will bring him here.” He touched her hand, speaking with his grip. “You will raise him well.”
She waited for him to say more, but instead he withdrew his hand.
“I’m wondering,” she said. “You seem different from last time. Are you-”
He angled forward and leaped away. A concussive snap rose from his shoulders, the sound of wings catching the wind.
The blast hit her, pushing her back.
Dust rose.
She covered her face. Too late. Something had blown into her left eye, burning, becoming worse as she rubbed. She turned away from the ledge, still rubbing, the pain spreading through her, filling her head, traveling with her as she awoke in agony.
By mid-morning, the eye had hardened to a milky white.
Her view of the world had changed forever.
* * * * *
Click here to order VEINS from Amazon.com, and be on the lookout for the sequel, VIPERS, coming soon.
This preview for VEINS was provided and published with express permission from Fantasist Enterprises and Lawrence C. Connolly. ©Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
