An Actors Strike Inches Closer To Reality

Remember the Writer's Strike that caused many of your favorite TV shows to air short seasons, be delayed, interrupted or postponed last year? Well, another strike may be about to happen in Hollywood. This time it's the actor's turn.

The Screen Actors Guild negotiating committee has called for its board to support a strike authorization vote. They are saying it "is necessary to overcome the employers' intransigence."

Contract talks have been going nowhere since the last contract expired on June 30th. Currently actors are working under the terms of the old deal.

A strike authorization vote needs the approval of 75 percent of the guild's approximately 120,000 members.

Most of us learned what the WGA were striking over, but what is SAG threatening to strike over?

Similar to the WGA strike, the big issue is how royalties from sales through new media methods are being handled. But it isn't just royalties from online distribution services like iTunes, but also DVD sales. None of these are currently written into actors' contracts.

I don't think I need to tell you how a strike would affect the film industry. The 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike lasted four months and cost the Los Angeles economy somewhere between $380 million to as high as $2.1 billion (depending upon which report you read).

Lets hope that things get worked out before another strike happens.

Kenneth Branagh May Direct 'Thor'

Marvel Studios has an aggressive schedule of film releases planned for their Marvel Universe characters. Besides the various Spider-Man and X-Men related films they have a number of films in the works (that they have greater creative control over) that are all linked together in the same continuity, a first for the big screen superhero genre. Although it sounds like DC & Warner Bros may have now been inspired to do the same thing.

Marvel already released Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk this year. They plan on releasing The First Avenger: Captain America in May 6, 2011 and team-up a number of Marvel characters together with The Avengers in July 2011. In the middle of all that we will get Iron Man 2 (April 2010), possibly an Ant-Man film and yes, everyone's favorite Norse god turned superhero...Thor.

And now it looks like Thor may have a director.

According to Variety, Emmy Award-winning, Academy Award-nominated director and actor Kenneth Branagh is in talks to helm the big screen adaptation of Thor.

Don't know who Branagh is? Well, his directorial debut was Henry V. The last film he directed was Sleuth starring Jude Law and Michael Caine, which grossed $703,000 worldwide. Some other films he has worked on include The Magic Flute, As You Like It, Hamlet (1996), Frankenstein (1994), Dead Again and Much Ado About Nothing.

Not exactly the first guy that jumps to your mind for a superhero film, but remember Marvel did say they wanted it to be less superhero and more fantasy. I am a little worried though that he hasn't directed an action film for 19 years. But Marvel usually makes good director choices, so I'm hopeful that it will be a good match.

The script is written by Mark Protosevich (The Cell). It is about a disabled medical student named Donald Blake, who can change into the hammer-wielding Norse god Thor. The arrogant thunder god Thor is forced to learn humility by his father Odin by sharing the body of Blake.

Thor is scheduled for a June 4, 2010 release.

Mark Millar's 'War Heroes' Gets Picked Up By Sony

Even if you don't read comic books you may already know Mark Millar's work. His comic book Wanted was adapted by Universal into a popular film this past summer. It grossed $293 million worldwide so it should be no surprise that there is already a sequel in the works.

But now Sony hopes to bring to life another of Millar's comic book creations. According to Variety, Sony's Columbia Pictures has picked up the Image comic book series War Heroes.

The books, created by Mark Millar and Tony Harris, are about "an experimental military program that gives ordinary soldiers superpowers. When a small group of recruits break off to use these powers for a criminal enterprise, a hero rises from their ranks to prevent catastrophic results."

Apparently a number of studios were "at war" over the rights. Millar and Harris are executive producing with Zach Schiff-Abrams (Domino)

Millar's Icon comic series Kick-Ass is another of his books that has already been picked up. It just began filming with director Matthew Vaughn and stars Aaron Johnson, Nicolas Cage and Christopher Mintz-Plasse.

Welcome to the new blog!

Hello world!

Welcome to the relaunch of the Scifi 411 blog. This is the first step in what will hopefully be a face lift for the larger Scifi 411 website.

You can find my personal blog, Ramblings of Marx (much of which has been archived on this site), over here: http://ramblingsofmarx.blogspot.com/

The new Scifi 411 blog will have news & reviews from the Scifi 411 writing staff.

Enjoy!

Marx Pyle

Dungeons & Dragons 2: Wrath of the Bad Script & Terrible Special Effects

I saw the new D&D movie, Dungeons & Dragons 2: Wrath of the Dragon God, on the Scifi Channel over the weekend. It suffered from a very low Charisma score that could not keep me entertained. As a fan of D&D and other role-playing games (see http://www.roleplay.org/ if you don’t know what a role-playing game is), I was actually looking forward to this film. Unfortunately, the dream was better than the reality.

The Good:

Kudos for the references to D&D rule mechanics (the barbarian with the rage problem, the teleportation limitation, spell slots, and having a D&D style cleric). Even more Kudos for the clever introduction of the barbarian and the terrible, but yet slightly humorous, fate of the wizard’s familiar. Triple Kudos for the excellent acting skills of Mark Dymond as Berek and Clemency Burton-Hill as Melora who both somehow managed to pull off some terrible dialog, and somehow added depth to otherwise depthless characters. Ditto for Bruce Payne as Damodar. Damodar wasn’t written as badly as Profion from the first movie, but Damodar was nowhere near as cool as he was in the first film (although that wasn’t apparently the same character…now I’m confused).

The Bad:

The script for this sequel is poor. I actually liked the first film, in a sort of that’s campy but worth watching on DVD "kind of way." I would probably give the first film a C.

But this second film was less campy, but more booorriiinnnggg. I’ll take campy any day over a 2.5 hour television movie that moves at a snail's pace. Ok, I’m going to sound like a cliché, but where was the bad guy’s “motivation.” Damodar comes back to life and the first thing he wants to do is destroy everything and rule over its ashes? OK. And that darn Lich. A – it was cool that they added a major creature from D&D (plus they also had a Magmin), but B – I don’t understand why he did anything he did. The “I’m evil” excuse just really isn’t good enough.

I’m also confused by the script. It almost appears that the film was originally going to be tied directly into the first film, but then it got hacked to pieces. For example, Damodar (who has the same name and is played by the same actor as the character in the first film) apparently isn’t the Damodar from the first film. At first Damodar says he was turned into an undead due to a curse by his master which activated when Damodar died. That doesn’t conflict with the first film, but then we find out that this Damodar died by accidentally teleporting into a wall. So…apparently not Damodar from the first film. Not to mention, this Damodar fought like a wussy Halfling, so he is definitely not the same kick ass Damodar from the first film.

I also thought, at first, that the two main characters (Berek and Melora) were the two main characters from the first film years later. Not so, but they sure seem similar… Perhaps that had been the original plan.

It may be just me, but this whole film seemed like a game session converted into a script. It even had a random encounter...those pesky bandits. Although having a game session turned into a movie is cool in a fanboy sort of way, it doesn't really make for a very good movie.

The setting for this film is generic (why not use Krynn, Faerûn, or Eberron), the characters have no depth (unlike characters from many of the Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, or Ravenloft books), and the story is also generic. Why reinvent the wheel, when there are already so many great D&D stories and settings to draw from?

The Ugly:

The special effects weren’t very special. I’ve actually seen TV series with better special effects, so I’m not surprised that this film didn’t make it to the big screen. Plus the make up was so-so. The goblin looked terrible. The Lich wasn’t as bad, but it didn’t look anything like how a Lich usually is depicted in art from the books. They also did some funky graphics in the beginning that just didn’t come out quite right.

I give this film a D+. Fitting for a film named D&D I suppose. Sorry, D&D fans, but a D&D film should be, dare I say deserves to be, better than this.