Month: November 2015

Kickstarting Cthulhu the Conquerer!

by Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

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When two great minds think alike, an older creation from H.P. Lovecraft’s world will arise. Cthulhu is a creation that’s getting a Conan the Barbarian style resurrection by creators Myke Allen and Steven Saunders in a crowd funding campaign. These two informally met at a local festival (introduced to each other by their mutual partners) and they hit it off quite well because of their common interests in fantastic literature. Saunders was editing for an e-magazine called The Uninvited at the time and needed an artist for a few stories. Allen was quick on the draw and from then on, they both realized they enjoyed working together.

“Steve’s interest is in dark noir and I was used to drawing superheros. It was a fun transition for me to build darker scenes, to develop harrowing stories. Steve sent me to the Whitechapel message board where I came up with the concept [of Cthulhu the Conqueror],” said Allen.

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Latest Force Awakens Trailer Gives Fans a Taste of the Action!

By James Robert Shaw (The Wind up Geek)

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Snoke: “There’s been an awakening. Have you felt it?”

Ren: “Yes.”

Snoke: “Even you have never faced such a test.”

Ren: “It is time.”

And with those words from Supreme Leader Snoke (played by Andy Serkis) to Kylo Ren (played by Adam Driver) we start this newest trailer off with a bang. So far much of what we have seen has been character development but this trailer gives us a taste of how epic many of the battles will be both in the air and on land. We also get a peek at the “Starkiller Base”, the home base of the First Order, an army based off of the Galactic Empire.

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An American Tale? The Good Dinosaur Goes West, A Movie Review

The one detail that the trailer to PIXAR’s The Good Dinosaur forgets to reveal is that the story takes place a million years after the planet Earth has dodged the bullet.

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The one detail that the trailer to PIXAR’s The Good Dinosaur forgets to reveal is that the story takes place a million years after the planet Earth has dodged the bullet. The asteroid that’s supposed to wipe out the life of these giant creatures have caused evolution to take a different direction. Since evolution is allowed to take place “normally,” these mighty creatures developed an intellect to conceive language, domestication and agriculture. They are no longer roaming beasts wandering the land in search for their next meal.

Henry (Jeffrey Wright) and Ida (Frances McDormand) are anxiously awaiting the birth of their three children, Libbey (Maleah Padilla), Buck (Marcus Scribner) and Arlo (Raymond Ochoa). The latter is the runt and is fearful of everything. That includes attempting to tame some primitive looking chickens and Henry decides that he has to teach his son how to deal with confronting his fears. There’s a few Studio Ghibli like moments with Arlo and Henry as they find a field of fireflies, but in what makes this film a sweet watch is the music. This movie is very much a love-letter to the Western, and it shows in the visual narrative and the orchestration.

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[Victoria, BC] One Man Virtuoso of Star Wars does The One Man Dark Knight Parody! A Preview and Interview

This remake known as One Man Dark Knight has a lot more of Charles Ross’ own original material in it to play out.

The Dark Knight Publicity Nov 27 & 28, 2015
Intrepid Theatre
1609 Blanshard St #2
Victoria, BC, Canada

Feb 18 -21, 2016
Waterfront Theatre
1412 Cartwright St.
Vancouver BC, Canada

Charles Ross, the One Man Virtuoso of the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings (LotR) stage has a new act! In One Man Dark Knight: A Batman Parody, he will be presenting his take of Christopher Nolan’s trilogy into a reduced format that will play out for an hour. Trying to figure out what trilogy to tackle next was difficult for this performer.

“It took a lot of time to figure out what I wanted to do as my next show. I wanted to find another Star Wars / Lord of the Rings type of film to adapt, and Nolan’s take on Batman was the only one that for me — pound for pound — I was really happy with,” said Ross.

In a prior interview with me (revised and reprinted here), he revealed what the story comes down to is about a disenfranchised person who’s least able to affect much change in his station in life. Like Frodo, a guy that lives in the Shire, or Luke Skywalker, a kid from a farm on the planet Tatooine, adventure comes to their front door. It whisks them away.

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Reading Eadweard, A Movie Analysis & Review

By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

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University of Victoria
Nov 24 7:00 & 9:15pm
with Q&A afterwards with the filmmakers

The life and times of Eadweard Muybridge, the Godfather of Cinema is explored in this semi-biographical film. Highlights of this photographer’s experiments with studying motion at the turn of the century is the focus and through this lens, viewers see how committed he is to this art when it hasn’t been given the label by the community of critics from this era.

Muybridge (Michael Eklund) is best known for his 1868 work in capturing the beauty of Yosemite Valley. In contrast, the events that led to the court drama around his justifiable homicide of his wife’s lover perhaps made him world-famous. This case is still studied today. She’s 21 years younger than he, and at that time, not many people batted an eye at their age difference. The movie delicately balances between the events that leads to the fall of their romance. Eklund deserves major credit for conveying the gravitas that’s needed to make this character larger than life and appear emotionally burdened.

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Can The Hunger Games in Mockingjay Part 2 Finally End?

By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

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Die hard fans of the Hunger Games will most likely appreciate Mockingjay Part 2 more in this finale than the casual movie-goer who has not read the books. For this trilogy which got its last novel split into two films, the bigger question cinema enthusiasts will ask is the wait worth it? Each volume has enough content (380 pages on average) to fill one film. When looking at how much material that’s presented from each tome per film, most likely not. When considering the plot in the book to what’s adapted for the theatrical version, there’s plenty of expanded and changed material to look at.

In this latest movie, the screenplay credit goes to Peter Craig, Danny Strong and Suzanne Collins (original author). Although the product has Collins seal of approval, maybe she’s falling into the trap of how most expanded trilogy films must flow.

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