With a title like Quantum of Solace, the only easy puns are far too theoretical and, perhaps, voice-synthesized, so for the sake of ease I’ve fallen back on the old Indiana Jones title construction.

Then again, with a title like Quantum of Solace no one knows what the movie is going to be about, which might be part of the reason MGM saw fit to release an official statement, as printed on MTV, to bolster the plot details discussed a month ago on Empire. The short form is that Bond is after the organization that co-opted Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale, and goes all over the world to get some answers, eventually targeting Dominic Greene, a businessman who aids a South American coup in order to aid his own efforts to control a natural global resource.

The long form, which might tell you more than you strictly want to know, is as follows. The title may be tripe, but the convoluted story sounds suitably Bond.

‘Quantum of Solace’ continues the high octane adventures of James Bond (Daniel Craig) in ‘Casino Royale.’ Betrayed by Vesper, the woman he loved, 007 fights the urge to make his latest mission personal.

Pursuing his determination to uncover the truth, Bond and M (Judi Dench) interrogate Mr. White (Jesper Christensen), who reveals the organization which blackmailed Vesper is far more complex and dangerous than anyone had imagined. Forensic intelligence links an MI6 traitor to a bank account in Haiti where a case of mistaken identity introduces Bond to the beautiful but feisty Camille (Olga Kurylenko), a woman who has her own vendetta.

Camille leads Bond straight to Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), a ruthless business man and major force within the mysterious organization. On a mission that leads him to Austria, Italy and South America, Bond discovers that Greene, conspiring to take total control of one of the world’s most important natural resources, is forging a deal with the exiled General Medrano (Joaquin Cosio). Using his associates in the organization, and manipulating his powerful contacts within the CIA and the British government, Greene promises to overthrow the existing regime in a Latin American country giving the General control of the country in exchange for a seemingly barren piece of land.

In a minefield of treachery, murder and deceit, Bond allies with old friends in a battle to uncover the truth. As he gets closer to finding the man responsible for the betrayal of Vesper, 007 must keep one step ahead of the CIA, the terrorists and even M, to unravel Greene’s sinister plan and stop his organization.

I must say I’m quite surprised The Breakfast Club has not yet been remade. I’m further surprised that the Hollywood Reporter would say that a “modern-day version of The Breakfast Club” is being produced and then provide a plot synopsis that has little in common with The Breakfast Club. And then say at the end of the article that this new film, Bumped, has no formal association with The Breakfast Club. So let me make this clear: Bumped is NOT a remake of the Breakfast Club. It might, however, be copyright infringement.

Bumped, which will be an independent film, is about five “twentysomethings” (I hate that word) who are bumped from a flight in Chicago and end up stuck in the airport together. HR makes a point to note that these people “normally wouldn’t be friends.” I guess that’s the connection the The Breakfast Club. Well, that and how it’s a comedy-drama. This is some shameful coattail riding. 

The script was written by Lizzy Weiss (Blue Crush) and will be directed by Anna Mastro, whom HR describes as McG’s “protégé.” I bet I know how she got that title (cue rimshot). I’m just kidding, Anna. I’m just having some fun at your expense. I’m sure you’re a perfectly capable individual.

I guess they’ll go into pre-production on Bumped soon, but that’s as far as they plan on going before the SAG situation is resolved. I’m hoping for a copyright battle in the mean time.

Photo: BEImages

If you’re a movie nerd – and I know you are. You’re reading CHUD.com, for Christ’s sake – you’re going to love this news. Guillermo del Toro has announced that legendary poster artist Drew Struzan will be doing the art for Hellboy: The Golden Army, opening July 11th. We got a note from the big guy himself where he expressed his excitement about working with Drew again: “For me, Drew Struzan’s work summarizes the power of cinematic storytelling. I eagerly await his first sketches for this HELLBOY: THE GOLDEN ARMY poster, and I am incredibly honored by the fact that Drew has agreed to collaborate with me again. Struzan’s fans all over the world, rejoice and be prepared for another beautiful piece to come from the master’s hands!!”

The two met last week to discuss ideas for the poster (and probably lots of other super nerdy stuff as well). In case you forgot what happened the last time these two worked together, here’s Drew’s great art for Hellboy:

When Forgetting Sarah Marshall conceded the May 30, 2008 weekend to Sex and the City (opting instead for a less splashy mid-April berth), folks around town viewed that as a sign of trouble.  The mighty Judd Apatow kowtowing to an uncalled-for big screen transfer of a passé television show?  He must not have the goods this time.

I’m embargoed on Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but do you think Apatow would set up another Jason Segel/Nick Stoller combo if their last collaboration was a misfire?  Trust me, all is well with Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and I can’t wait to see what this team does with Five-Year Engagement, which will also be produced for Universal by Apatow and Shauna Robertson.  The premise sounds simple enough:  Segel stars as a regular guy who suffers through the highs and lows of a lengthy engagement.  As expected, it’ll skew toward the raunchy, R-rated side of relationship comedies, which suggests it’ll be as painfully spot-on as most of Apatow’s movies.  I like how director/co-writer Stoller explained it to Variety:  “It’s definitely an extension of our desire to explore the depth of human misery.  If Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) and Jason’s character had stayed together, this might be the sequel.”  Nothing good could come of those two staying together, so this should be a lovely parade of pain.

Variety doesn’t list a start date for the film, but with the rush to get everything shot out before June 30th (and most of the town being completely booked), I have a feeling that this won’t get rushed into production.  Of course, I reserve the right to be completely wrong about this.

I have little experience with that kind of thing, though I believe my friend’s cat once lapped up some beer I spilled. He didn’t drink too much of it, however, and I don’t think I noticed him stumbling around afterward. That made me sad. My friend was pissed that I wanted the cat to get drunk.

But I would assume that to get a horse drunk, you would have to give him way more alcohol than would be even remotely ideal. After all, the weight of an average horse is 5 to 6 times the weight of an average man. Still, a few handles of cheap liquor could get the job done.

Unfortunately, Toby Keith’s new movie, Beer for My Horses, is about neither beer nor horses. Instead, Variety says, it’s a wacky comedy about a couple of “[wacky] small-town deputies who [wackily] embark on a [wacky] road trip to rescue their [wacky] girlfriends from comically evil [and wacky] drug lords.” I predict, however, that there will be one scene in which the deputies’ horses (hopefully this quest will be taken on horseback) drink beer. Keith is one deputy; awful comedian Rodney Carrington is the other. The two also wrote the movie, so everyone reading this probably knows right now if they will ever watch this movie.

This isn’t news for dedicated Toby Keith fans who have been salivating for him to make another film appearance. This project has been in the works under the radar for a while, and the film is actually going into production as we speak. Country music video director Michael Salomon is helming.

The title of the film comes from a single of his from a few years back, which he sang with Willie Nelson. Guess What? He’s in the movie as well. He must be really bored these days.

Also in the cast are Ted Nugent (what?), Tom Skerritt, Barry Corbin (!) and Claire Forlani. I swear, every time I see Forlani’s name attached to a film, I feel surprised, like my mind just refuses to absorb the knowledge that her career is ongoing.

And what the fuck is Ted Nugent doing in this movie? Bizarre. I bet George Bush will be thrilled. I’m just confused.

CMT Films is presumably trying to set this up for a theatrical release. That didn’t work out so well for Keith’s other film, Broken Bridges, which tanked. After four weeks of release, CMT cut their losses and aired it on TV. That won’t happen with Beer for My Horses, though. I have no doubt that the combination of Toby Keith, Rodney Carrington, Ted Nugent and the prospect of horses drinking beer will guarantee it $100 million at the box office.

I kid.

Well, this looks positively dreadful.

I didn’t always hate Sex and the City.  There was a time when the novelty hadn’t worn off, the writing was fairly sharp, and the characters were somewhat appealing.  Then the show fell in love with its own bawdiness, and the charm was gone.  Suddenly, listening to four women banter like bitter old queens was as excruciating as it should’ve been in the first place, with each successive episode deteriorating into an increasingly desperate jumble of stock scenes (Carrie agonizes over Big, Charlotte does something naive, Miranda can’t decide if she’s happy, Samantha fucks something, and the girls lunch somewhere trendy). 

So why is this getting the big screen treatment again?  Is there anything original left to say on the state of being a privileged tramp in New York City?  Of course not, but the enormous success of The Devil Wears Prada signaled to studios that there’s a market for chick flicks in the summer, so why not get the harpies back together for one last shrill meditation on what it’s like to screw your way to contentedness?  Carrie’s certainly an expert on it, having broken up Big’s marriage during Season Three, but let’s be happy that the philandering pair are getting married anyway!  Oh, but wait!  There’s a twist!  Carrie gets a life-altering call on her cell phone and leaves Big standing at the altar!  Fuck yes, it’s a remake of Telefon!

No matter how wretched Sex and the City: The Movie is, it’s going to rake in a ton of too-little, too-late cash for New Line when it opens on May 30th (the charming and very funny Forgetting Sarah Marshall was wise to vacate that date).  God help you if your wife/girlfriend/boyfriend drags you to this misery.

Last year Edgar Wright told me that he though they could possibly stop McSpaced, the US version of his classic TV show Spaced, from ever happening. It turns out that trying to stop McSpaced is like trying to wish away cancer – you can’t do it.

The show is moving forward, despite the cries of rage from a million fans. The American version of the show will be produced by the guy behind Will & Grace and will be from McG’s production company, and it is almost certainly going to lose every single bit of the charm, wonder and magic of the original. Here’s what Edgar has to say on his MySpace blog:

For anyone who missed my previous blogs, me, Simon [Pegg], Jessica [Stevenson] and Nira [Park] are not involved in any way, shape or form.

And neither do we want to be.

That show was very personal to us.

It’s about Simon and Jessica, not just some format or high concept.

It pains me to see it reduced to this…

“Single-cam half-hour revolves around a young man and woman who pose as a couple in order to rent a cheap apartment.”

Feel free to vent. I haven’t got the energy right now.

I continue to wonder what the exact point of remaking Spaced is – without the genius of the people involved and their very specific nerdy pop culture sensibilities, you’re left with a generic sitcom concept that doesn’t really have a ton of US name recognition. It’s the execution that makes Spaced special, not the idea of two people pretending to be a couple to get a cheap apartment.

It’s Edgar, Simon and Jessica who are really getting the shortest end of this stick, since Spaced wasn’t something they did for the money but was a project that meant a lot to them, and as Edgar says, was about them. Some people are saying that the up side of this is that more folks will be turned on to the original, but I feel like there is no up side. Unless a plane full of gay rapists crashes into the studio where the pilot is being shot on the day McG is visiting. And McG survives the crash and is trapped in the rubble with the rapists for a week. That’s an up side.

By the way, it looks good for a Spaced DVD release in the near future. We’ll keep you updated.

Buy it from Chud
System: XBox 360
ESRB Rating: Teen
Developer: Mistwalker
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios

One role I’ve embraced during my MCP tenure is that of resident Final Fantasy Apologist.  Final Fantasy is by far my favorite game series, and despite its flaws (namely everything involving Final Fantasy VIII), it is truly a legendary video game series.

Accordingly, when Mistwalker, headed up by former Final Fantasy executive producer Hironobu Sakaguchi announced Lost Odyssey, I put a giant anime circle on my calendar.

From the opening moments, it’s clear that Lost Odyssey is not only in the line with the other JRPGs that have made their way to the US, but truly a spiritual successor to the Final Fantasy franchise that Sakaguchi left behind when he started Mistwalker. 

The game taking the look of the well made, but melodramatic (even for a JRPG) Final Fantasy X, implants the familiar, but somewhat antiquated game mechanics of the RPGs Sakaguchi popularized in the US. Experience Points, eight levels of spells, random encounters and turn-based combat, all standards of the JRPG, are all prevalent in the game, but work as well as they ever did.
 

As for new wrinkles, Lost Odyssey has done something that had become the Achilles Heel for JRPG gameplay, overleveling.  One of the biggest problems for early console RPGs was that a player had to spend hours upon hours battling random enemies, raising experience levels, just to be able to survive in the next part of the game. This made what was about 10 hours of true gameplay stretch into 20 or 30 hours. Not very exciting. 

In an effort to move gameplay along, games like Final Fantasy IV devised a system where as long as the player engaged in every random encounter, their player levels would be in perfect shape to move on to the next area.  Unfortunately, this caused the problem of “overleveling,” where players would grind in an effort to make future battles virtually impossible to lose.  As a result, RPGs lost their edge.  In a game like Dragon Warrior, a player could easily die at a moments notice.  However, RPGs in the past decade have been about as tough as Glass Joe.

Lost Odyssey, however, utilizes a system which only allows players to reach a certain level before cutting off the ability to gain experience.  This allows players to move the story along, but not allow them to become demi-gods prior to the end of the Prologue.  Additionally, it has made for every battle to actually mean something. J RPGs had reached the point where most battles involved holding down the “A” button and watching the characters dominate, until the boss battle, which would require about as much effort to get Alex to play Apollo Justice. While the shift is simple, it has me completely engaged in battles, making them welcome interruptions from dungeon crawling, rather minor nuisances.

Now before all the Grinders get thier metal slimes tangled, you’ll be able to reach your precious level 99, just not until very late in the game (basically when all the side-quests and bosses unlock).

One common thread running through JRPGs are character skills, whether it be the ability to steal, cast magic or heal.  Modern RPGs have basically left the characters a blank canvas, with the player determining what skill and attributes to give each character. Lost Odyssey goes more “old school” and each character has its defined role.  However, certain characters, the “immortals” are able to learn abilities from items or “mortal” characters who acquire skills be raising levels. 

Early on in the game it is very easy for the immortals to learn all the mortals skills, making them, by far, the most useful characters.

Given the very ridged gameplay structure of the JRPG, most rise and fall on their story.  If a game can overcome the usual traps of melodrama, poor voice acting and backstories more cliché than last Tuesday’s All My Children, a JRPG will more than likely be a success.

Lost Odyssey’s main character Kaim is a thousand year-old mercenary, who is the only survivor of a battle that ends in a cataclysmic meteor crash, but in the interim has lost his memory.  As the game progresses Kaim’s history is retold in a series of dreams.  These “dreams,” which are essentially fables with Kaim as a side character, are essentially only told through text and are littered throughout Disc 1.  While these dreams appear to have no impact on the storyline, some, mostly those that have the least to do with Kaim’s struggle as being an immotral and more to do with the meaning of life. Y es, I know I’m really stretching here, but fables like “The Upstreamers” are very extremely well presented for a video game.

Lost Odyssey’s desire is to build a strong storyline, and thus the focus of Disc 1 is setting-up that overarching story.  Additionally, a disproportionate amount of Kaim’s dreams are placed in Disc 1, attempting to build Kaim into a more-rounded character, as opposed to the whiny-blonde haired brats that have littered the JRPG scene for the past decade.

As a result, ithe game moves incredibly slow.  Battles will be few and far between. The other aspect of Disc 1 that stands out is that it could be the most depressing game I have every played.  For the first twelve hours of the game, everything that can go wrong goes wrong.  By the conclusion of Disc 1, however, the traveling party begins to take shape, the enemy lines are drawn, there are some postive events and the game gains steam.

Final Fantasy series composer, Nobuo Uematsu adds to Lost Odyssey with his recognizable, but strong soundtrack.  As for the graphics, there are basically the next step forward from the PS2 days.  More detail, which leads to the usual JRPG trap of heavy Anime influences.  This includes Kaim, while the least feminine of recent JRPG protagonists, is still nowhere near manly.  The biggest complain is that the women only come in two sizes, thin with normal boobs and thin with giant jugs.  With the addition of HD, this has reached the point where its clear that painstaking detail was put into one characters Hewitts, including adding the veins.  God only knows what this means for poor Taki, when Soul Calibur 4 comes out later this year.

While not being perfection and falling into some of the JRPG traps that dissuade modern gamers, Lost Odyssey is a strong game and a must play for any fan of the JRPG.

That’s all for now.

Why am I eager to play Battlefield: Heroes, even though it looks like a redheaded stepchild frankenmonster built from leftover bits of Battlefield and Team Fortress 2? For one, this trailer suggests that I might be able to sit on the wing of a plane and fire a mini-gun at other planes while another player handles the stick. Also, it’s free.

Yep, EA’s upcoming wargame, which bears a really terribly uncanny and obvious similarity to Valve’s wargame*, will be a free download. The trailer even tacitly acknowledges that PC gamers will torrent a game if they can, but that it won’t be necessary this time, and I like that sort of corporate awareness. Is this part of the ‘new EA’ we keep hearing about?

Also, there’s a Risk-like persistent mini/meta game built in that tracks wins and losses across a map of Europe, so your Royal or National Army forces (read: English or Nazi) won’t just fight individual battles, they’ll contribute to an overall war. That’s a possibly neat touch. Finally, there’s a character customization system, which presumably gives us a veneer of choice while dodging the large-calibre bullet that is the superbly designed and balanced set of archetypes Valve created for TF2.

Still, it’s free, so I’ll play it. See the trailer below, or go to Gametrailers for a slightly HD version.

*Yes, the one EA helped publish, but that everyone knows is all Valve.

Beginning Friday, February 29th and appearing every Friday that follows, I’ll be writing an online novella one chapter at a time one week at a time. From the seat of my pants. Who knows if it’ll suck or if it’ll flow well, make sense, or have any merit whatsoever. Regardless, it’s going to happen and I hope you’ll come along for the ride. – Nick.

Prologue

I was twenty-five
years old when The God arrived.

I remember
going through my father’s tackle box looking for the gold spinner lure we used
to catch rainbow trout and finding that soiled knife. The knife he was holding
when the dock broke. The blade was thick with grime from gutted fish, sliced up
earthworms, and who knows what. Yet there it was. I faintly recall my aunt
Janie meticulously gathering everything from the lake after the funeral and
neatly arranging it in the shed behind our summer cabin. Like nothing bad had
ever happened. She’d even gotten that knife, which had to have been at the
bottom of the lake after the accident. Never asked her how she did that. She
went above and beyond.

 I also faintly recall going into the tackle
box a few times in the decade since he died, sometimes looking for something to
fish with and sometimes looking for something that made it easier to remember
my father. Everything in there was caked in memories of him. Oftentimes, I was
stymied on both accounts, whether by fear of the rising emotions or the fact
that fishing never took on the same significance in his absence. That day I was
determined to show my newest lady friend I knew how to conduct my manly
business with a stick and some thread.

Then
everything went belly up.

The flash of
light. The impact. The sound of a magnetic nothingness. Everyone on the planet
felt the presence of The God at precisely the same moment. I was reeling in a
lure very slowly when it happened, a little crank and tug before the spinner
caught the light to tell the trout that the dinner bell was sounding. Clara sat
behind me nursing a beer and laughing at my lack of style when it happened and
I instantly thought of terrorism. Knee jerk reaction back in the day. You heard
a big boom and it was on. The Rags were invading our space again. That was the
knee jerk. Reality was a concussive force and then the physics which followed.

I fell on my
ass, but she wasn’t laughing any more.

Human beings
are pretty spiffy but the animal parts of the brain and the neurological
impulses which fire in times of heavy shock remind us that we’re not as special
as our air-conditioned homes would lead us to believe. Regardless of creed or
culture, we all knew the jib was up for us when it first washed over us that
blistering summer day.

The God chose
a field in upstate New York to be its Ground Zero. Fitting I suppose. It was a
serene enough place, cows and red barns and the whole nine. A six thousand foot
chunk of jagged rock standing in the middle of it all was just another
skyscraper in the state with the most famous ones in history.

Our history.

The thing
stood there casting a shadow somehow miles long despite the time of day. It
hovered an inch above the ground and it could be seen from twenty miles away,
some sort of cosmic optical illusion. It could be seen from space, as witnessed
by the astronauts unlucky enough to be in orbit during its arrival. They all
came down to Earth in embers. So did the satellites and so did most of the commercial
and military aircraft en route to wherever they thought they were going. The
God seemed to issue an unspoken mandate on mankind’s desire to fly, a stamp
marked “No” witnessed by Notary Public and sealed with a wicked kiss of instant
death to all who defied it. My sister Kate was a flight attendant and it was
only later I discovered that she was lucky enough to be judged by The God in
that first fell swoop.

But here I
still sit, aged like a cheap wine and with more stories and theories than
minutes on my own life’s clock. I sit still and remember. Memory is the only
freedom we have now, an offering from a vengeful God.

The God’s
minimal grace was a bouquet of flowers compared to the work of Its Followers.
They arrived much later. Right about after we got used to the idea of a whole
and pure power standing tall above us and owning our every move.

Its Followers
snuck in the back door.