Wherefore art thou ‘Knights of Badassdom’?

May 28, 2013 Amanda Broyles Leave a comment

Sit back, close your eyes, relax… and let me tell you a tale that will frustrate and infuriate even the most chill amongst us.

It starts back in 2010 when a group of actors signed on for a movie about a group of LARPers (that would be Live Action Role Playing for those who aren’t in the know or who haven’t seen Role Models) who accidentally summon a real demon and the hijinks that ensue. This just isn’t your run of the mill group of actors though. No, this is a group of actors that get the neck hairs of a wide variety of geek standing on end. Peter Dinklage, Danny Pudi, Jimmi Simpson, Steve Zahn (a personal favorite of mine), Ryan Kwanten, Joshua Malina, and of course the geek girl herself, Summer Glau. I don’t know that it’s possible to look at that list of names and not want to immediately see what they have put together.

Well, fast forward to 2011 San Diego Comic-Con and a trailer is released. Our own esteemed Dr. Kronner did the honors and provided a nice write up about it, including interviews with the cast. You will most certainly want to check that out, but just for ease of use right now, let’s go ahead and put the trailer here as well.

Right? Even though I’ve never had the chance to don chain mail and wield a foam sword myself, I am a huge fan of LARP and movies about LARP. I’ve watched Faintheart more times than I can count, and Unicorn City is one of my “because you liked…” categories on Netflix. Hell, I’ve even watched All’s Faire in Love more times than anyone should ever admit to, so it isn’t really surprising that I really want to see this movie. Enter the problem.

It appears as if Knights of Badassdom has hit a bit of a snag and by that I mean, it’s having a lot of issues, and by that I mean, we might not ever get to see it. With a trailer being released in 2011, one would expect to see the movie in 2012, especially when the movie’s site has a banner that says…

In case you’ve been living under a rock, 2012 has come and gone and this movie has not been released. Actually for quite a while there was nothing even mentioned of this movie. In July of 2012, an unknown investor in the movie took to the internet claiming that the film’s production company, IndieVest, was doing nothing but stringing them along. Then radio silence again.

I googled June 15th and got this as a response. Apparently Google doesn't believe Mr. Wade either. — I googled June 15th and got this as a result. Apparently Google doesn’t believe Mr. Bradley either.

That was until March of this year. It seems as if the original cut of the movie, done by director Joe Lynch and completed days before the trailer was released at Comic-Con (remember this was back in the summer of 2011), was tossed aside by the Indievest and namely, it’s CEO Wade Bradley. It was actually Wade Bradley himself who responded to the ‘Rip-Off Report’ complaint by saying that “The film is now readying for its final mix and is on schedule to be released (by IndieVest Pictures) in the first half of 2013.”

I’m thinking that perhaps Mr. Bradley needs Santa to bring him a calendar this Christmas because there’s only roughly three weeks left in the first half of 2013 and there’s been neither hide nor hair seen of the recut Knights of Badassdom. But what of director Joe Lynch? What has he been saying in all this? Well when IndieVest was planning on screening their own edit, he took to twitter to make sure that everyone knew that it was not his version of the film by often using the hashtag #notmyedit.

He hasn’t said much else about it since then, instead choosing to tweet about Joss Whedon and S.H.I.E.L.D., conversations with friends, and his podcast, The Movie Crypt, with Adam Green.

When asked directly about Knights of Badassdom, the answer is a little sad.

I’m a person that hates to see good people get hurt (unless they’ve wronged me then I take glee in it – I’m a complicated individual) so it’s disheartening to see a director of a movie get shut out of his own project publicly like this. Granted this was probably mishandled by everyone involved but it’s hard not to paint IndieVest as the demon in this situation.

The real victim here though? Well that of course is the movie and the potential fans of said movie. I think we can all agree that this is the type of film that it doesn’t really matter if it wasn’t the best writing, or the best story, or the best anything. As a rule, if you don’t mess up the major things like Star Wars, Star Trek, or any other established universe, we geeks can be rather forgiving. There aren’t many shows or movies that have LARP as a main aspect so I think it’s safe to say that most of us would embrace it regardless. Sadly, no word yet on if we’ll ever get that chance.

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George R.R. Martin Talks ‘The Winds of Winter’ and Staying Ahead of HBO

May 27, 2013 Dan Woizinski Leave a comment

George R.R. Martin has reluctantly put forth 2014 as a potential deadline for the next book in A Song of Ice and Fire, according to an article from International Digital Times:

“…the sixth volume won’t be released in 2012 or in 2013. I really look forward to publishing it in 2014, but I am really bad for predictions… when I finish this saga I will be judged for the quality of the books, not for the speed of my writing.”

The site speculates that, although the wait time between books has been excruciating in the past (up to a whopping five years for the last two), a 2014 completion for The Winds of Winter could be feasible, noting that “A Dance With Dragons came out on July 12, 2011 at the pleasant easy reading length of 1,510 pages. At that point, Martin supposedly had 200 pages for Winds of Winter already complete, chapters originally intended for Dance but pushed ahead for story and pacing reasons.” In addition to the 200 completed pages, Martin’s revealed that at least another 200 are written in some capacity. This would mean nearly a third of the book has at least been put to paper with TWOW’s predicted total count sitting at 1,500 pages. Personally I wouldn’t get too caught up in the specific dates or predictions – fans who have in the past have been burned repeatedly – but take some relief in the notion that 2014 is even being considered as a possibility; I’d add a two or three years to that just to be safe, and just know that by 2017 there’s a decent chance you’ll be able to read the next instalment.

http://youtu.be/E5_QQreskNI

The 2014 deadline would also serve as a buffer between the HBO series and the source material. The TV show is now hot on the heels of the novels despite the 15 year handicap and 1,500 new pages would prevent the show from overtaking the books for at least another year or two, but this is an issue Martin is very conscious about:

“I am aware of the TV series moving along behind me like a giant locomotive, and I know I need to lay the track more quickly, perhaps, because the locomotive is soon going to be bearing down on me. The last thing I want is for the TV series to catch up with me. I’ve got a considerable head start, but production is moving faster than I can write. I’m hoping that we’ll finish the story at about the same time … we’ll see.”

Martin has to be sick and tired of the constant poking and prodding about The Winds of Winter. I feel for the guy. If you are one of the many who have reached the end of book five and can’t take the wait anymore, there is an excerpt from TWOW available at The Winds of Winter Release (Spoiler warning inside. Duh.). Read that rather than bother the poor man with your insatiable demands. Aside from that there is a wonderful 25 minute interview HBO conducted with GRRM himself and the TV series’ executive producers D.B. Weiss and David Benioff. All that, and if the episode nine trailer is any indication, we’re up for one Hell of a finale to the third season.

Welcome back to Westeros!

More on THE WINDS OF WINTER – click here.

Movie Trailers

Maniac Remake Makes For Disturbing Viewing

May 27, 2013 Adam Parker-Edmondston Leave a comment

The horror genre goes in phases, it always has. With the recent spell of haunting movies and zombie flicks it seems that the new trend is brutal horror pieces that dare you to keep on looking. The Purge, You’re Next and the new Evil Dead movie have all gone for extreme violence and thrills. Now Maniac is getting in on the action. Another remake, this time of a 1980s film made by cult horror director William Lustig and starring Joe Spinell (best known to main stream film goers for his part as Rocky’s mob boss) as the overweight sweaty psycho. This remake seems to be following the same formula but has switched it around by having baby face Elijah Wood in the lead role of the killer and is written by Alexandre Aja, the man behind horror classic High Tension. The director is Franck Khalfoun (P2). The killer is called Frank who is a disturbed man with only his mother for company. When she died his thoughts turned to darkness. He owns a mannequin shop and develops an obsession with a woman who he sees photographing mannequins. While this relationship is building, his killer urges still need to be satisfied in the most extreme ways. Here is the new trailer but be warned it has extreme content in it.

This trailer certainly captures the tone of the movie with its mix of sex and violence which makes for uncomfortable viewing. As usual, the red band trailer takes it just a little bit further.

Elijah Wood seems to be able to give off that puppy dog look and then switch it to inverted psycho very easily and it is pretty creepy hearing him talk about how much he loves his potential victims before smashing their faces in walls, stabbing them up, etc. The difference here is that you can imagine pretty boy Elijah having no trouble picking up these women to murder and also the relationship angle works a lot better here. In the original because of his size and general look, it was difficult to see poor Joe Spinell in a relationship with a hot lady. It seemed forced in that film, while from the bits we have seen in the trailer this relationship seems to develop more organically. The original did have a sleazy feel to it because of its tone and the low budget it had. This film tries to retain some of the original’s grime and even though it looks a lot smoother it does show that dark underbelly. The tense scenes in darkened alley ways and streets certainly helps add to this feeling. There is a good chance a shower may be in order after diving into this sleazy affair.

Elijah is a big part of this film working as he plays against his typecasting to give us a truly scary portrayal of a mad man. Much like Norman Bates in Psycho, his good looks and supposedly normal interactions with people hide the darkness inside and is merely a shell to hold the killer at bay. Mind you, anyone that has seen Green Street will know that when Elijah Wood really wants to kick off he can break heads with the best of them. The use of constant POV shots will no doubt make the viewing experience even more uncomfortable because the viewer has no escape from the carnage they are seeing and it seems like we are actively engaging in it to or just as bad, becoming a voyeur looking at all the carnage as it unfolds. Mannequins are just plain freaky anyway and they pop up a lot throughout this movie, all helping to keep that dark atmosphere.

This is all looking promising but if the film will be able to keep up with the dark tone of the original still remains to be seen, but it looks well on its way to getting there. Getting Alexandre on board is certainly a plus. He is well known for his work on hard hitting and shocking horror movies so this film is in safe hands and the dark tone seen in the trailer will hopefully be seen throughout the movie. The key part of the original film was the way the female victims were killed, with their heads getting scalped and put onto mannequin’s heads. With the new posters that have just come out (via Dread Central) it seems that this film is going the same route with some nice posters showing how gruesome this film is going to get.

Movie News & Opinions

‘Days of Future Past’ Casts Evan Peters as Quicksilver, Possibly Sparking a War Between Fox and Marvel?

May 26, 2013 Scoot Allan Leave a comment

In some surprising casting news, Bryan Singer has announced that Evan Peters has been cast as Quicksilver in X-Men: Days of Future Past. If the name Quicksilver seems familiar from recent news, it’s because his inclusion in The Avengers 2 was recently confirmed by Joss Whedon. Singer revealed his news on Twitter, as he has grown quite accustomed to lately, revealing looks at Halle Berry As Storm, makeup for both Nicholous Hoult as Beast and Jennifer Lawrence As Mystique, Peter Dinklage’s first day on set, and pretty much every other piece of news we’ve seen over the last few months. Below is the edited tweet:

Continue reading ‘Days of Future Past’ Casts Evan Peters as Quicksilver, Possibly Sparking a War Between Fox and Marvel? →

True Blood – #WaitingSucks but a new trailer doesn’t!

May 26, 2013 Amanda Broyles Leave a comment

I’ve mentioned it before, (here in the S.H.I.E.L.D. trailer write-up) but I love when shows embrace social media, especially when they come up with a clever hashtag with which to brand themselves. There are few better than the HBO vampire show, True Blood, with their #WaitingSucks campaign. In addition to having something that is easy for people to spread around twitter, they put out YouTube videos as well.

Continue reading True Blood – #WaitingSucks but a new trailer doesn’t! →

Movie Trailers

Empires of the Deep: The New Waterworld or How to Lose $130 Million…

May 25, 2013 Adam Parker-Edmondston Leave a comment

Hollywood has quite the history of movies that have thrown their money away in an attempt to give us an entertaining night out at the cinema. Films like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Waterworld (for whatever reason) all went over budget and crashed and burned when it came to release day. Now it looks like we have yet another massive waste of money with Empires of the Deep, a Chinese-American co-production starring ex Bond girl Olga Kurylenko. Don’t worry if you have never heard of this film, no one has which is frightening for a film that has had a hundred and thirty million dollars pumped into it over the course of 3 years.

empires of the deep fish lady

Twitch Film has been kind enough to put together a brief rundown of what this film actually entails. It is the brain child of Chinese real estate tycoon Jon Jiang who wrote the script himself and helped finance it. Already a sense of foreboding is setting in for most of us reading this, but still the project kept circulating with director Pitof involved and Irvin Kershner (Empire Strikes Back) as a producer but both of them dropped out of the project. Pitof’s only claim to fame is the overwhelming turd that was Catwoman. Now if the man who directed Catwoman declined this movie it does not bode well. It changed hands numerous times until settling with director Michael French (who is mostly famous for TV projects like Taming the Dragon) finishing the film up with the already mentioned Olga starring. The problem (among many this production has had) seems to be they had no real producer presence on this movie what so ever. Harrison Liang and Kevin Jiang are the two people credited, but they are CGI guys on the movie. No producers on board means no budget control which leads you to over spending.

empires of the deep fish head

After all this it has still managed to rear its ugly head and now has an internet presence with this trailer, which we can now share with you, but be warned it’s not the aquatic setting that is making this seem a bit fishy, it is just because it is rubbish.

Plenty of comparison can be made here. It looks to me like a mix of Avatar and Dune set underwater which is not inherently a bad thing if the cinematography did not look so bad. It looks like a bad TV movie, poorly shot and acted. The cast with fish fins on top of their heads look as if they auditioned for the Adam West Batman as the villain of the week. This makeup does not look organic and oozes cheesy. Now I am afraid we have to look at the special effects which all look on the level of classic such as Giant Piranha or Shark Night. Dire. This would not be such a bad thing in itself as these films are a good laugh, but you expect that as they were made for peanuts. These level of effects are not what I expect to see from a film with this much money spent on it.

All that said, I will still be buying it when it comes out on DVD, as I am guessing I will not have to wait long before it ends up in the bargain basement sale section. But there is no way I am seeing this movie in the cinema. If the next trailer isn’t considerably better, the film is going to be in for a very rough time when it finally arrives on the big screen sometime later this year.

empires of the deep whale

Grizzly Bomb

Monthly Archives: May 2013