| Author | Message | ||
     Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
http://www.deadline.com/2011/02/viral-sensation-dead-island-takes-movie-shape/ | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
That's astonishing. Just astonishing... | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.173.208.57 |
Good, isn't it? I watched this yesterday, then started reading all the complaints about it! | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 81.131.174.204 |
Zombied out by it. Clawing at my own neck, my own vital organs. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.255.42 |
The graphics look good, if they're in-game and not just cut sequences, but is it really any more interesting seeing zombies eat people backwards than seeing them do it upside down? This doesn't move art on a single step. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.24.209.217 |
It might be going too far to call it the new face of anything, but I certainly found it powerful and moving. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
I found it very powerful and incredibly moving. Nice to see creative people being, erm, creative. The trailer's better than the last 20 full-length Hollywood horror films I've seen. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I have to agree with Zed, it's moving and artistic and kind of nerve-jangling. And indeed, it does tell a complete, even if micro-sized, story. But I do wonder, like Proto, what it actually means for art itself. I'm not sure it's adding anything to any form.... | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.46.44 |
Does it has to 'move art on' to have merit? Isn't being powerful and moving enough to make it worthwhile? | ||
| Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker) Username: Stephen_theaker Registered: 12-2009 Posted From: 92.232.184.206 |
It's a good short film. As a trailer for a game it doesn't work so well. No game footage in a trailer usually means there's no game worth showing! But there are exceptions - the Halo series has been promoted by some brilliant short films over the years, like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXqbRiegy1s | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.87.170 |
Well, I did tell them not to go to Egypt for their holidays, but would they listen . . . ? In all seriousness, games are on the cusp of becoming interactive movies. The guy who made The Road actually made this Western out of the i}n-game graphics from Red Dead Redemption: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZUUVV2rjoc I reckon the next generation of console - maybe 2016 - will be indististinguishable from films. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.196.39 |
"In all seriousness, games are on the cusp of becoming interactive movies." You may be right, but only partly because games have improved. Films have degenerated too, so they'll meet half way. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.153.144.35 |
I liked it! The music does help, and the slo mo. We'll have to see if the whole game gets by without those things. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.196.39 |
Sure, but you can add plaintive strings over footage of someone staring into a microwave oven and it becomes moving. It's rather like the male choir that's required in all action trailers. We're bristling with buttons and They're pushing them. Demand better! | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.87.170 |
Yeah, the day some Hollywood guy discovered Barber's adagio for strings was a sad day indeed for popular culture. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
I disagree, Gary - at least now people who wouldn't usually be exposed to classical music have heard it (although they now associate it with Platoon). | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.87.170 |
Btw, Justin, I wasn't comparing games with films. I was making the point that games are becoming interactive films. An interactive film is not a film. And games will never be films, because they wouldn't be games any more. Different and incomparable media. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.87.170 |
That wasn't the point, Zed. I'm all for classical music in films. I'm just saying that scenes such as the Platoon one have been endlessly emulated. You've said yourself that Hollywood films tell us when to applaud by the use of cheap tricks. Swirling orchestral soundtracks are the most powerful - and lazy - way. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
We're bristling with buttons and They're pushing them. That's true. But to me one of the main functions of art is to push those buttons - I demand to be moved by art, and the very fact that a silly video game trailer can do so astonishes me. I'm not interested in game - I'm not even judging this as a trailer for a game, but as a piece of artistic entertainment. On that level, it worked for me. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.87.170 |
>>>that a silly video game trailer Snob.  | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Gary, the whole function of Hollywood is to give people what has worked before. To understand Hollywood, you have to accept that they aren't interested in what's new or original, but what has worked (and made money) before. You don't get many indie/arthouse films doing that kind of thing, the big cheesy orchestral moments, etc. They tend to strive for something more (generally speaking). Which is why I lost interest in Hollywood as an artistic outlet years ago - and this, oddly, has allowed me to enjoy a lot of Hollywood product in a way I wouldn't have done before, when I fooloshly expected more. But I digress... | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Snob Yep. I spend a lot of money trying to be a snob.  | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.87.170 |
Er, yeah. That's what I was saying. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.196.39 |
"...when I fooloshly expected more." You weren't foolish to expect more! And we used to get more, after the collapse of the studio giants and before the capitalism plugged the gap which allowed all of that horrid art to leak into the product (i.e., the '70s). Maybe that time was an anomaly, though. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.87.170 |
>>> Snob. We all have our misplaced affections. Games mean to me what trashy 70s horror flciks mean to you. I grew up with em and still indulge them. And am certainly interested in their long-term development. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
I couldn't agree more, Proto - that period of American cinema in the 70s made me expect more, and then Hollywood spectacularly failed to deliver. Still, I watch modern Hollywood films for absurdity and epic daftness, and indie (and foreign-language)films for actual artistic content, so it's not all bad. I was rewatching The French Connection recently, and all I could think was "where did American cinema go wrong"? Back then, it produced cinematic greatness. Now it's all just retreads of what's gone before (and I'm not even talking about remakes here). Sigh. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Gary - those affections aren't misplaced. We love what we love for good reason. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.87.170 |
>>>This doesn't move art on a single step. Proto, doesn't this attitude betray a capitalist mindset? Aren't the central mechanics of capitalist progressive, as if things (art inclusive) improve the more time passes? And isn't art qualitatively different from this? If art goes anywhere, surely it goes deeper? But deeper than Shakespeare? Deeper than Beethoven? I doubt it. Art therefore doesn't need to go anywhere. It just needs to keep illuminating our 'progressive' age. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.87.170 |
>>>We love what we love for good reason. I agree. But it's also true that one person's tawdry passion can be another's article of superciliousness. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.87.170 |
Fuck it, let's feel good about our relative affections for trashy horror and computer games by picking on train spotters! | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.196.39 |
I was rewatching The French Connection recently, and all I could think was "where did American cinema go wrong"? Conventional wisdom says JAWS (1975). When B-movies became A-movies, with A-movie budgets and A-movie responsibilities. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
But it's also true that one person's tawdry passion can be another's article of superciliousness. Oh, yes. But why care about that? I don't. The fact that someone else doesn't like what I do - or even activel hates it - doesn't matter a jot to me. I still like it. I can find beauty and art in some tawdry 1970s Italian splatter film. That's a gift worth having. I'm sure you can do the same with a game like Doom. Even though I can't see it, I love that you can. It gives me a ense of hope that we can love this stuff. We all have different buttons, and various ways of having them pressed. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.196.39 |
If art goes anywhere, surely it goes deeper? But deeper than Shakespeare? Deeper than Beethoven? I doubt it. Art therefore doesn't need to go anywhere. It just needs to keep illuminating our 'progressive' age. Yes, deeper than Shakespeare, but just in a different direction. Shakey was good with historical drama, but he's a lightweight when it comes to the zombie holocaust genre. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Proto - yep, I've heard that many times before, and while it's probably a sound theory, I'd argue that Star Wars was a more pivotal movie for fucking up art in Hollywood: that's when the merchandise thing came in, and films became 100% market-driven. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.87.170 |
Erm, I'm not bothered. Was just saying, like. The way you did when I used to dismiss 70s horror. All right? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
>>Shakey was good with historical drama, but he's a lightweight when it comes to the zombie holocaust genre.<< Cannibal Holocaust moves me just as much as Macbeth. All art is subjective. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.87.170 |
Proto does the old RCMB wriggle! | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.87.170 |
>>>All art is subjective. Oh, this old chestnut . . . | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
But it is subjective - that's its nature. You can't measure or define it. What's art to one person is trash to someone else. That's why we all have these endless discussions, and nobody can agree. Critics have based entire careers on the inherent subjectivity of art. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.196.39 |
"Proto does the old RCMB wriggle!" Re: art progressing. Perhaps "going" somewhere isn't the right image. I have a problem with art taking its influences from other art, rather than from life. That, to me, is bad art. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
The RCMB Wriggle...isn't that a dance move? | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.196.39 |
So, as an example, I felt that that video game trailer was a riff on Memento but didn't add anything to it. In that way, I think the word "progress" has meaning in art. If art illuminates life, as you say, it doesn't have to progress, but if you copy someone else I think it's incumbent on you to take things further. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.87.170 |
The notion that the perception of art is subjective is absurd. That means Agadoo is as worthy as Beethoven's 9th. If you tell me it probably is to some people, I'll say those people know no better. If that makes me a snob, so be it. I know I'm in good company, if folk would but be honest. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.87.170 |
OK, Proto, I catch ya drift here. Fairy nuff. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
I completely disagree, Gary. But the fact that you have a different opinion to me doesn't bother me at all.  | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 81.131.174.204 |
I think Zed is an angry robot. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.87.170 |
The third time you've mentioned this. I see what you're implying. See ya. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Huh? Me or Des? I'm just implying that we all have different opinions. But mine is always the right one. Des, I'm nothing but an ass. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.153.144.35 |
For me, there was a bit of progress in this little trailer - the locale, the use of the family, the playing with time are all quite new to the zombie genre (for me). I felt progress in the fact that if it made me see it a little differently it might make me want to do the same. I remember Werner Herzog saying we need some new images and I know just what he means. This trailer was a bit new. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.153.144.35 |
I've just been saying to Proto that films are like games anyway - both just make us think, if they're good. Even the act of looking and thinking is a kind of game. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 147.252.230.148 |
Yes, and I was saying that the divisions Gary pointed out between film and games are artificial. All art is an interactive game - you choose what angles and distances to view a sculpture and for how long, all trying to solve the puzzle of the artist's intention. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 147.252.230.148 |
Just a thought - do you have to be a parent for that zombie clip to affect you? I'm not and it didn't. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.59.115.60 |
I'm not and it did, so maybe you don't. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.59.115.60 |
Does that sentence make any sense? | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 217.20.16.180 |
Good trailer. Although the final game sounds like it will be just a slightly less hectic Left 4 Dead, and will predominantly involve hitting zombies in their faces with frying pans. I have no problem with this. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.87.21 |
"Does that sentence make any sense?" It did and it does. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Hey Tony, if they threw in a zombie-kicked puppy dog, it would have been perfect! I think, upon analysis though, that one grabbing aspect of it (and this really has absolutely nothing to do with it being animated: it's purely accidental, this!), is the use of wholly contemporary individuals. The father, the mother... they look just like the annoyingly smarmy yuppie couples you'd run into at a high-end Calabasas strip mall on any given Saturday morning, for example... the individuals under attack here, are finally US: our commercial-created culturally-placid hyper-styled "Wives of [insert city]"-watching cell-phone-texting Facebook-updating selves. It's not post-apocalyptic retro-70's chic anymore in this video, and I think that might be its most arresting element. And again - it's only an accident that these guys used it first! | ||
| Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker) Username: Stephen_theaker Registered: 12-2009 Posted From: 92.232.184.206 |
I find the differences between storytelling in games and books really interesting. The actual stories being told are often very similar. Where games sometimes fail is when they try to tell those stories in the same way they would be told in a film or book - and then you get reviews criticising them for being linear, on rails, full of cut-scenes, etc. As a rule of thumb, if your story is in the cut scenes, most players will never know what it was, because they'll be skipping them in order to carry on playing. Good storytelling in games lets the player discover the story for themselves; it's part of the game. It's a smashed door in Half-Life 2, a broken barricade, a crumpled newspaper. Even better are games that create spaces in which players can make their own stories. So in Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare, it's not the mission where I had to do x, y and z that sticks in the head, so much as the time I fell off my horse, slipped down a mountain and ran through the woods at night pursued by zombie warthogs. Or in Civilization, which is all about emergent gameplay and story, it's the city at the farthest reach of the empire, struggling against the odds to hold back the Incan hordes. In a game, the player has to be made to feel that they are creating the story, that without their hands on the controller there wouldn't be a story. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
Hmmmm. I was expecting something good from all that's been said here, but I must admit I just didn't get anything from it at all. Perhaps it would be better if it was played the right way round? Sorry, but I just didn't get it - what am I missing here? (someone will probably say "a heart"!) | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
BTW I'm not a great zombie fan. Well, not the Romero kind of zombies like this anyway. Now, White Zombie, I Walked With A Zombie - those were *real* zombie films. I wouldn't mind seeing a return to those kinds of zombie films - there's real pathos in those too. I think it's probably just because this looks like any other kind of pre-Romero zombie thing to me, ie. a bit boring and cliched.  | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
Sorry, I meant POST-Romero, of course. OK, I'll just crawl away and hide now ...  | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Caroline, I loved I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE! A wonderful film! (And, one Hollywood at one point had plans to remake, too.) | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
Good storytelling in games lets the player discover the story for themselves; it's part of the game. It's a smashed door in Half-Life 2, a broken barricade, a crumpled newspaper. That's very true, Stephen. Few of the story missions from Red Dead Redemption have stayed with me. But I'll never forget the time I fell off my horse halfway up a mountain in the middle of a thunderstorm and came under attack from two wild boars. It didn't end well for poor John Marston that time. |