The Prince Of Persia (Sands of Time) Game Trilogy

DLCrews is a member of the Two Tons crew, and will be contributing his rather cynical and usually technical perspective on things from time to time.

To be honest, I won't pay much attention to these movies until, at the least, I can actually go out and see them. Heck, even just a trailer maybe! But that's me and my rarely cracked cynical view on preview information. For now, what I can comment on whole heartedly is the Prince Of Persia games. The original had a special place in my heart, regardless of my royally suckage in it at the time. When I heard a new one was out I was intrigued, but had my doubts. Thankfully someone I knew bought it and after playing their copy I quickly fell in love. It had wild and free acrobatics, a variety of cool time effects which were sanity saving for a platformer, an epic and mysterious feel to the locations, characters, and events, and, well, even if the combat was repetitive and fairly boring, it didn't really matter. The game rocked. The Prince was a great character, unsure of how to prove his worth, both to his father and himself, but still determined to move ahead regardless. Sometimes it was in the small details where it really came to shine. It was ironic how many times I found myself unable to solve a puzzle just because other games had conditioned me to not try obvious solutions that should work! Want to get on the other side of that ladder? Tap to the side, he just flips around it. Sliding along an edge hanging with you hands and come to a corner? No problem, he just works his way around it. There were plenty of things like that to be found where it just worked.

Some time later I heard news of a sequel. And what's this? An interesting view of the Prince as a man on the run, hunted by a physically manifest force of fate it's self, to kill him to set right his his manipulations of time, as he grows more haggard and desperate to survive and evade the hoards that pursue him. Then, uh, you know, the game was delivered. Except not the one we were promised. Suddenly the Prince was no longer a believable a character, one who you could take part in and root for. Understand on the one level why he was so desperate and yet wonder on the other if perhaps he was being selfish and cowardly in evading his fate. He became an anti-hero, a bad man, who dropped one liners and lost all believability. Penny Arcade fittingly mocked this by giving him the line, “I smolder with generic rage.” Aw heck, who am I kidding. They've already said all that needs to be said about that debacle here http://www.penny-arcade.com/2004/12/03/pop2/

But the key point to take away is this. Some people loved it for the platformer it was and just worked through the combat. Others ignored the platformer and complained about how the combat was neither good nor prominent enough. Alas, when they made that second game, guess who they listened to? The combat may well have been slightly better, but it should have largely gone away, not been made the focus! At anyrate, I gave up on that game, and although the third one is supposed to be better, I've just not bothered to find the time to try it out. I'd love to see that first Prince take to the screen and continue his story telling (a theme of the games), but I have serious doubts as to what source they will choose to emulate for the movies.....

New J.J. Abrams Project "Fringe"

J.J. Abrams, the prolific TV producer and writer has unveiled his newest TV project, a series called Fringe. Abrams describes the work as being a mix of all things good about The X-Files, Altered States, and The Twilight Zone.  The show's central story focuses on three characters, a female FBI agent, an institutionalized scientist, and his estranged son. This trio is called upon to halt increasingly unexplained phenomenon around the world, utilizing all their strengths to succeed at this daunting task.

The Fox Network has bought the idea after Abrams shopped it around a little, and has budgeted out a $10 million dollar budget to shoot the two hour pilot. Joshua Jackson from Dawson's Creek fame has been cast as Peter Bishop, the son of the raving mad Dr. Walter Bishop, who is played by John Noble. Noble more recently has played the role of Denethor in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. The role of FBI Agent Olivia Warren has gone to Australian born actress Anna Torv. 

The show is being executively produced by J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman, and Roberto Orci (the team that composed most of the upcoming Star Trek film) as well as Bryan Burk (one of the prominent producers on ABC's Lost). Abrams spoke to Variety magazine on the subject, and when discussing the style and feel of Fringe he made the following the comment: "It's definitely meant to scare the hell out of you, but it's also meant to make you laugh... It pushes all the buttons of things we loved from our childhood."

One of the main features of the show, according to Abrams, is ordinary people in extraordinary situations. He wants to exploit the relationships between the three leads  as well, saying they're very relatable characters in and of themselves. Most of the show focuses on could-be-crazy Dr. Walter Bishop played by Noble, who begins the series in, of all things, a mental hospital. It is Torv's character of FBI Agent Warren who brings Dr. Bishop's estranged son to the stage and into the action of the narrative. As per many J.J. Abrams stories, there will be an overarching narrative mythology that will fill the essence of the plot, but unlike Lost most of the episodes will be self-contained phenomena.

The Pilot is currently in production in Toronto and the series will premiere on Fox Networks on September 9th, 2008, at 8pm EST.

Prince of Persia Film Trilogy

It's true. The Prince of Persia game saga is going to be translated to the big screen, the first film set to be released in 2009 right now. Jake Gyllenhaal is slated to play the protagonist, Prince Dastan, and the film boasts other recognizable stars such as Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2, The Company) and Sir Ben Kingsley (Lucky Number Slevin, Ghandi). The story (as far as I understand) is being based upon the story in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and shares the same title. It's being directed by Mike Newell (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) and was scribed by Carlo Bernard, who also penned The Great Raid in 2005.

But enough of the facts, now onto some thoughts. My biggest beef with this idea so far is that it's all ready slated to be a trilogy right out of the gate. Now this isn't new, and Indiana Jones did this, as well as Star Wars and several other extremely successful trilogies, that's not my problem with it. The reason I have a hard time accepting it is because it's a video game movie. And I love video game movies as much as the next guy (hell, I want to write some of their scripts myself) but the current trend in adaptations of games into cinematic films is that they suck. There is total and unprejudiced disregard for all the material that even made the game franchise successful in the first place. Pretty much all that survives this brutal cutting process is the character names. The Hitman movie (with Timothy Olyphant as Agent 47) shared only names with its digital counterpart. The Agency, Diana, and Agent 47 remained continuous but all things related to the plot, the structure, the mannerisms, even the back story was off, changed for the sake of the particular film they wanted to make. If they wanted to change so much they should've made it a different movie and saved Hitman for a movie worthy of that moniker. 

I fear Prince of Persia (a game I haven't played too much of, admittedly) will fall into the same rut. The first movie will bank on the built-in demographic of gamers who all know it'll be horrible but will line up to pay their $8 tickets anyways, and it'll make what they spent and get a profit, but it'll ruin the potential for a good film. Especially reading the slightly worrying summary of the movie. The Prince teams up with a rival (note that, a rival) princess to stop an angry ruler from unleashing a sand storm to destroy the world. This sounds like it could've been inspired by the game's events, but I don't see mention of time-effects or anything of that nature, and that's a big enough deal to enter the subject of a summary and logline. Oh well, hopefully the stories in the sequential two games will be more well thought out.

And what happened to the good ol' days when you signed up for a trilogy but the second two  movies were actually based on the merit of the first? Nowadays we just chug out three films with the same unlucky actor who got stuck in a shitty contract and there goes that, a good 6 hours and $24 of our lives. Assuming you don't buy popcorn or anything. 

I pray that the excellent casting of this movie and director can overcome this challenge and create the first in a hopeful wave of game-to-movie adaptations that actually live up to the underrated medium they were born from. Videogames deserve so much more than cookie-cutter, money-hording cinematic executions. Give 'em a chance, please.

IMDb's site on Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is here.

Save the Hard Drive! (Crash Time)

Episode 1: Crash Time (Xbox 360)

Demos so bad you won't even want the free download...

Don't be fooled by the seemingly exciting moment captured in the screenshot above. It's as much misdirection as the mission where you take the rookie to the "crime scene" only to reveal it's a coffee shop (more on that later.) This demo is good at one thing, and it does this one thing marvelously. It reminds us Americans how God awful English sirens sound. Perhaps the sound of fear got a little lost on the way across the Atlantic, or maybe it was in fact too scared to attempt the journey, but the siren that your hero car emits is the most perfect rhythmic depiction of "annoying." An otherwise abstract feeling reserved for the most extreme cases of promiscuous roommates and/or mosquitos, now graciously has its meaning expanded, encompassing all of the English police force. 

During my brief stint on the elite "Cobra 11" task force, I did such important police-like missions like taking the newbie to the local coffee shop, and taking down a speeder after causing at least a dozen fatalities thanks to the lack of physics in the whole of Great Britain's highways. Vans and sedans exploded without prejudice or logic as I spun them out with my seemingly indestructible cruiser. In a preview video, I saw what looked a lot like a Soviet BMP utterly demolishing what looked to be a similarly threatening minivan with a devestating T-bone strike. God Forbid the demo include that vehicle in my missions, otherwise I'd leave much more bodies in the hospital from my do-gooding than I would by letting the damn speeder go.

And this isn't even getting to the good part of the camera sliding in and out of reality while in the middle of a high speed chase. If you've ever been frustrated watching the news chopper try to futilely keep track of a car chase (that's actually fast) than imagine trying to track one when you're camera is underground in purgatory while you're actually in command of the vehicle, and with these physics no less. You can see why it's more dangerous for the police to even get involved in these things than let some pretentious bastard get away with driving 12mph over the speed limit...oh wait, make that kilmoters per hour. Whatever the case, it's madness...oh, right, but there's that one other thing: This is ENGLAND!

Save your hard drive space on your Xbox and instead download something that rewards you for crashing your precious car more often...like Burnout: Paradise. Catch ya later!

The author doesn't take responsibility for your enjoyment or utter disgust at the games mentioned here. Similarly we can't be held responsible if we say the demo sucks, you buy the game, and surprisingly you find it sucks as well. Play at your own risk. 

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

Here is one of the videos that started it all, back in the High School era: "Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!"



The quality is a little lacking, and there's a gem of a story as to why that is. The entire video was conceived, planned out, shot, and then edited in a roughly 5 hour period, on an incredibly crappy digital camera that just so happened to be able to film video as well. The footage passed around the paws of everybody involved, everyone wanting to take a stab at editing and tinkering with it, and while I made the ultimate video edit (or YouTube edit if you prefer) there seems to be a curse that follows it. My computer shot fire (no joke) at me shortly after finishing the video which prompted me to immediately replace the power supply of my computer. That fixed the immediate problem, that being the dragon-like fire breathing attributes it had taken on for a time, but it didn't stop the next calamity. All kinds of nasty-ass viruses began to eat their way through my computer like a bunch of freakin' carpenter ants in a 200 year old home. The computer was crippled, but thankfully I had sent the finished file to my friend DJ (who stars in the movie as "Freeman", our poorly executed parody of Gordon Freeman from "Half-Life" fame). My computer was scrubbed and reformatted and as a result, lost the files that made the video, and everybody else had given up on editing it and so they had deleted the rather large files to save on HD space. DJ sent the video to a friend named Matt Sachse ("Messiah" in the video) just before a virus crippled DJ's computer, as though some kind of conspiracy-like tale was unfolding, attempting to cover up any evidence of this video ever being filmed...maybe because of our rampant bible-throwing? Who knows. Regardless, it stayed safely on Matt's computer for years, and last year, in my second year of college I rediscovered it and threw that bad boy up on YouTube to get it out onto the interweb and safe from any more computer shattering diseases. Of course, is YouTube's HQ spontaneously combusts one day in the near future, don't come looking for me...this site will no longer exist and Two Tons Productions will have just been a figment of your over-productive imaginations. In the meantime, here's "Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!" so enjoy!

Insomnia Strikes

So it's currently 5:00pm where I live and I've been up for a total of 56 hours or so now, with only about 3 hours total nap time in that window. It's ridiculous. Never before has such an insanely long bout of sleeplessness plagued me, and here for no reason whatsoever it decides to harass me. There was no logical reason as to why I should not be able to go to sleep right now. My work is finished, there is no immediate chore or job for me to accomplish, and for the love of all that is holy, I'm listening to Coldplay for crying out loud. Coldplay is supposed to calm you down and put you to sleep, not get you excited for the next 48 hours of open-eye entertainment.

Of course, the best part of this was I got to see the new Weezer music video of their latest single "Pork and Beans" from the Red Album which is just fucking fantastic, I'll be honest with you. I only listened to a select few Weezer songs up until this point, but this on particular gem is wonderful in its own right, and the music video just takes it all to a completely new level. You guys should definitely check it out on YouTube.com or something, because it's priceless. And of course, the more familiar you are with the YouTube community as a whole and what is popular, the more entertaining you'll find the video.

Beyond that, I've started a savings plan with regards to The Pilgrimage that ought to set some realistic goals on the amount of cash money I'll need to have in two years' time in order to successfully make the trip from the East side of the USA to the prestigious Los Angeles community. I'm a little concerned about my skill level as a writer, and I'm hoping to improve upon that in the two years prior to the move, so I'm going to set out a series of exercises and workshops for myself in order to achieve my goals of being a screenwriter. I'm posting a lot of my works on my Deviant Art page, so you can go there: http://foxtrotwarfare.deviantart.com/ to check it out. Some of the stuff (most namely screenplays and the like) won't appear there for obvious reasons. I need to register those with the WGAw before I can start to show them off. That and I'm still editing and tinkering with them.

So for the time being I have my work cut out for me, and hopefully I can get some freakin' sleep soon because my eyes are getting a little heavy.

Westward Bound!

Well a few days ago a pledge was made to under a "Pilgrimage" to the City of Angels, Los Angeles, California herself upon college graduation. So now myself and a close friend of mine are gathering our forces (money and talent) and saving as much as humanly possible to succeed in this endeavor. The trek will take 8 days, and we'll pass through several cities like Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Houston and San Antonio, Texas; Tucson and Phoenix, Arizona; and of course, finally, Los Angeles, California. We'll be met by several colleagues and friends with similar ambitions and set up shop with local contacts at which point we'll get some jobs, make some money, get ourselves situated and begin the arduous task of attempting to make something out of what could possibly be the most competitive market known to the United States. Along the way we'll be documenting our journey with a Sony Handycam video camcorder as well as filming several little vignettes of our journey to produce into one smashing video by the time we reach our destination. It's going to be a hoot. Savings accounts have been set up, money is being stockpiled, it's going to happen in two years from this post. This is going to a running journal of the task of preparing for this occasion as well as compiling some samples of work we're preparing and the script that will be used for the vignettes along the way. Wish us luck, this is going to be intense!