Hey folks, you won't believe how lucky I got at Gamestop the other day, Mario & Luigi Bowser's Inside Story came out a little over a week ago, and the Gamestop I usually visit was sold out of copies. Luckily, another Gamestop was nearby, and I was able to buy a copy from there, and they only had one copy left. Dang, how lucky huh? I can tell you this for sure, Bowser's Inside Story is going to be pretty big, considering so far it's sold .69 million units in Japan alone, even more than Partners in Time's lifetime.
Also, I HAVE FURY! Because Fawful returns, and he's hilarious! What with great lines like, "Fawful lacks beef! Fawful is beefless!" For more, just play the game yourself why don't you?
Gameplay wise, it is epic! An RPG that actually makes you feel like Bowser is a true winner. Just like the title implies, you play on the inside of Bowser with Mario and Luigi, only you play from a side-scrolling perspective. So there you go, another game, another award winning DS game.
Recently I got around to seeing two movies, Gamer and State of Play. State of Play is an old school political thriller in the vain of All the President's Men with an original scenario as well. If this is your kind of genre, definitely check it out, it's a really well done film for its genre.
Also Gamer, I was quite interested when I saw the ad in theaters. Premise is that in 2034, mind control technology is revolutionized when Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall), creates nanites that allow players from way further away to control another person in a program like "Society" or "Slayers" to either play as some different person altogether or fight in Slayers like the ads have been promoting. It's a pretty cool premise, but it's rated R for a reason, because it can be pretty grotesque at times. Not to mention there's this one scene that has me wondering a lot recently. You see, there's this one scene where Kable (Gerard "Sir THIS IS SPARTA!!!" Butler), chugs a whole thing of Vodka, manages to run through a whole battlefield, then he pukes and pees into a vehicle's fuel tank, then he manages to start up the car. Is this really plausible? Pretty alright movie, but it could have been better over all.
Also, what I wanted to do was post up my thoughts on a work in progress from Peter Berg, which is none other than a remake of Dune. Yes, Dune. The legendary book series that continues to influence science fiction to this day. If you read it, you've also probably heard of the David Lynch movie and the Sci Fi Channel mini series. In a nutshell, they both made different attempts to bring Dune to life, but they both had their faults. I'll try doing a review of both the miniseries and the movie someday, but I'll tell you how people generally think of these adaptations: "The movie, great production values, not so great adaptation of the story. The mini series, bad production values, great adaptation of the story." The end result is that there are waging sides within the Dune fan base bickering about which adaptation is better.
The David Lynch movie was the result of many years of a Dune adaptation long in development that couldn't get out. David Lynch's adaptation was also a rushed product since he was trying to make a faithful adaptation, but due to time constraints, he was only able to get the barebones story out onto the big screen, but the end result took out everything that made Dune what it was. To this day though, Lynch's adaptation has a cult following, and fans of the movie will usually make two arguments, "It's not a perfect adaptation, but at least David Lynch made an attempt. He at least tried unlike most directors at the time would have tried." (Don't believe that statement? Check it out.) and also that its imagery was very influential in how people view the world of Dune. This can be seen in the video game adaptations that followed in the years after, so as a result the attempt wasn't a total loss.
Fans of the mini series promote it because of how faithful it was to the book. My dad is a fan of the mini series because of how faithful it is to the book, and if all your looking for is a faithful adaptation, it's bound to give you what you're looking for. But because of the bad production values (It's a Sci Fi Channel production, you do the math.) there are those who say it's a bad adaptation because of that.
And now to introduce you to the new attempt, Peter Berg. If you want to see the details so far, check out the Unseen Dune website: http://www.duneinfo.com/unseen/jodorowsky.asp. Peter Berg is going to be leading the third attempt to make Dune on the big screen a reality. Peter Berg is a fairly new director, but one thing that sets him apart from David Lynch is that he's actually a fan of the book series in question. He's responsible for films such as The Kingdom, Friday Night Lights, The Rundown, and Hancock. I've only seen Hancock, which I admittedly liked, but I can't say much else on his other works.
There is one statement that he's been using that's kind of got me questioning. Berg says he's planning on venturing for a more "muscular" interpretation of the story. Basically he says that he's looking for a supposedly more adventurous story, though he says it's possible to do without offending fans of the Bene Gesserit and Kwisatz Haderach ideology. On one hand, I'm glad to hear that he's not going to ignore what made Dune what it was, and Dune isn't without its action sequences. But overall, I'm hopeful that he doesn't end up getting lost in making Dune a heavy scale action movie and ends up meeting the same fate David Lynch's adaptation met.
For a hopefully more hopeful note, the creators of the miniseries are going to be involved in the movie, so if we're lucky, we might in a one in a million chance get the miniseries on the big screen but with infinitely better production values. Also the scriptwriter is confirmed to be Joshua Zetumer, the same guy who revised the script to Quantum of Solace.
For a bit of an outro, things that you can take as you will. Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson are going to be Co-Producers. Again, take that as you will. And if you're hope the art direction from the first movie is returning, it's not likely since concept art is being produced by "Jock" (Mark Simpson). And finally, Peter Berg has apparently been meeting with Robert Pattinson for something (You know, that dude from Twilight). There have been some suggestions that he could be going "from vampire to Kwisatz Haderach". I've only seen him in the Harry Potter movies as Cedric Diggory (Come on, you wouldn't expect ME to see Twilight would you?), so I don't really know if his acting would be convincing for the role as Paul Maud'Dib. I tried starting up a thread asking if people thought Pattinson was qualified for the role, but nobody answered. So I wouldn't mind hearing your input. Do you think he's Paul Maud'Dib? Judging from his looks I think he could pull off a good Feyd-Rautha or even maybe even Rabban if he put on a few pounds. On a totally unrelated note, I just remembered there was a fat guy in Gamer that I think would be physically similar to the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.
Well those are the details so far, there's not much else to go on. But here's to hoping maybe Peter Berg will surprise us with the LOTR treatment Dune has been long overdue for. I also just remembered I didn't talk about what made Dune as special as it was in the first place, but don't worry, I plan on someday possibly doing an overview of the Dune books I've read to give you the idea. So until then, let the spice flow.
That's the news from Myviewing as of September 23, 2009.