The Scorpion King: A Solid B-Movie

The Scorpion King (2002)
Universal Pictures
Starring: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Kelly Hu, and Michael Clarke Duncan
Rated PG-13 for action, sensuality, and peril (why not, it’s as ridiculous as rating something based on smoking)
92 minutes

You’ve got to hand it to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, he’s had a pretty successful film career that has been compared to that of Sylvester Stallone’s and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s. The former WWE star, turned actor made his first film appearance as the Scorpion King in The Mummy Returns in 2001. Unfortunately, Continue reading “The Scorpion King: A Solid B-Movie”

Kevin Smith Vouches the Watchmen

Watchmen screenshot

Everyone’s having doubts about this. Zack Snyder is doing risky business by adapting to film the greatest graphic novel of all time. Will he succeed? Nobody can be sure, because you can’t have the film take too many liberties from the novel, and you can’t capture all the subliminal hints and qualities of the novel fully in the film.

In any case, Kevin Smith, dude extraordinaire, has watched the Watchmen (don’t worry, the use of that pun is going to increase exponentially as we approach March 2009). A paltry NDA stops him from saying anything, but he definitely has words to share about the experience:

“I saw Watchmen. It’s fucking astounding. The Non-Disclosure Agreement I signed prevents me from saying much, but I can spout the following with complete joygasmic enthusiasm: Snyder and Co. have pulled it off. Remember that feeling of watching Sin City on the big screen and being blown away by what a faithful translation of the source material it was, in terms of both content and visuals? Triple that, and you’ll come close to watching Watchmen. Even Alan Moore might be surprised at how close the movie is to the book. March can’t come soon enough.”

Now I am one of the pitiable souls who has not watched Sin City yet, but I can tell that the guy is saying that it’s going to be a great movie. I don’t know how many changes will be made to the movie upto release date, though. It’s still a good 7 months or so away, so you never know. Still, seeing Smith’s reaction, I think we can all expect something extreme.

Chris Carter’s Millennium Good Summer Viewing

Millennium
20th Century Fox
1996-1999
Three Season; available now on DVD
2881 minutes

For those who are X-Files fans, and even those who aren’t, Millennium is a worthwhile series that delves into the dark side of human nature and the supernatural. Created by Chris Carter, X-Files mastermind, I found this short-lived FOX series similar if not more intriguing and haunting than anything Mulder and Scully encountered.

Continue reading “Chris Carter’s Millennium Good Summer Viewing”

TheWB.com Is 100% New Media Friendly

I love it when a company is proactive in being New Media friendly. Give users your content whenever and where ever is so pleasing.

TheWB.com is aiming for just that. Going public Aug 27, TheWB.com features older WB shows along with new original web series. Not only will this content be available on TheWB.com – it will also be on Dailymotion, Joost, Sling Media, TiVo and Veoh Networks! They already have a Facebook application that allows users to share The WB content.

Continue reading “TheWB.com Is 100% New Media Friendly”

Epic Making New IP with EA

Epic Games

Epic, impressed by their work on the Gears of War PC port, bought People Can Fly not very long ago. Now’s the time for action. Epic has announced that their Poland-based PCF studio will be working on a whole new IP to be released for the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3, all by EA. About time.

And we just got you excited on that, then sorry, we don’t have much else to report. That’s pretty much all that has been released upto now. No title, no hint of story, nothing. Still, being the keen industry analysts that we are, we’re guessing it will be a sci-fi first person shooter, involving either a dystopia or an alien invasion.

Epic seems to have been on a roll recently. While they have always prospered by selling their uber Unreal Engine to other devs, they took a walk out of the tent with Gears of War and are working on its sequel as we speak. They’re also doing great licensing Unreal Engine 3 and have a 4th version in the works.

Their flagship product, Unreal Tournament 3 didn’t do so well, however. This has left the franchise abandoned for the while, as no more news has been announced regarding it yet. Still, in an informal chat conducted by BeyondUnreal, an Epic employee (hehe) had said that Unreal Tournament will last as long as Epic does.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor Misses the Mark

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
Universal Pictures
Starring Brendan Fraser, Jet Li, Maria Bello
Rated PG-13 for language and action
112 minutes

The Gang\'s all Here (well, two of them) in \

I really liked the first two Mummy movies, and still do to this day. So I went into The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor with high hopes. I’m sorry to say I was quite Continue reading “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor Misses the Mark”