Tag Archives: Horror

Ten Things I Learnt from Kevin Smith

04/04/2007 Olly 2 Comments

Ever since I saw An Evening With Kevin Smith it’s been my mission to see one of his legendary Q&As, but his trips to the UK don’t happen too often. On every previous occasion I didn’t find out in time, so this one must have been kismet as I fired up my RSS reader for the first time in ages, just in time to be informed that it was happening.

So that was where I was last night, and I ended up learning some interesting stuff from the great raconteur.

If Kevin Smith had to pick a man to have sex with, it’d be his friend Bryan Johnson.
Kevin Smith’s next comedy, which he has just about finished writing but won’t be made until after his planned horror movie (inspired by Race with the Devil), will apparently have the most self-explanatory title ever, on the same level as Snakes on a Plane. Unsurprisingly, he wouldn’t tell us the title.
Kevin Smith is currently a fan of (NSFW!) SexyLabia.com. I dread to think how much comment spam posting that link will bring in.
Kevin recently bought a miniature dachshund because he and his daughter thought they were funny. Despite the age difference (eight years next to less than a year, or 56 and 6 using that seven-dog-years-to-one-human-year thing), his labrador Mulder may have gotten the weiner dog pregnant.
Jeremy London is the only actor that Kevin regrets casting. Despite the fact that Jason Lee was far better, Jeremy gave him notes on how to improve his performance.
Kevin finds the idea of black pudding abhorrent. As do I, to be fair. He also finds British cuisine’s obsession with pigs weird.
Harvey Weinstein wanted them to show Clerks 2’s pussy troll on screen. Kevin and Scott Mosier didn’t want to, so set out to make it unusable by either making the depiction far too offensive (getting John Kricfalusi to animate something obscene that wouldn’t make it past the MPAA) or too lame (Jason Mewes dressed up as a troll doll inside a giant wooden pussy). Despite Mewes’ enthusiasm – he’d get to keep the wooden pussy, you see – the idea thankfully passed.
Kevin ended up rewriting his whole scene in Die Hard 4.0, giving himself a huge speech. The studio was unsure about it because it turned a humourous scene into one with a ton of exposition, but Bruce Willis had Kevin’s back (“let me ask you this: who’s your second choice to play John McClane?”).
Kevin Smith can use the word ‘tchotchke’ in a sentence. I still struggle to pronounce it.
Lucas and Steven Spielberg are huge nerds: they like to compare websites and look at pictures of women in lingerie together. And Lucas liked the Death Star contractors idea in Clerks.

My photos are up on Flickr here.

And, one thing I learnt in London itself: some people shouldn’t be allowed to drive. This is aimed at the cunt that almost took us all out on the zebra crossing in Richmond.

Games, Impressions, Xbox

Dead Rising Demo

05/08/2006 Olly Leave a comment

I don’t think I’ve seen Xbox Live running as slow as it was yesterday when the Dead Rising demo was released since E3, which I’m not sure is indicative of the level of anticipation for this game or just the lack of anything else to play. Enough flogging of that (un)dead horse, though.

The demo of Dead Rising doesn’t have any plot whatsoever and actually ends whenever you trigger a story cut scene, but maybe the lack of point is the point. I didn’t get to know any of the characters outside of the merest hint of a storyline at the beginning, but what I did get to do is crush a zombie with a sledgehammer in seconds of starting; pelt a zombie with ketchup; run a shopping trolley through the undead horde; throw a bowling ball down the stairs through a crowd of zombies; pelt them in the head with golf balls; thrash through them with a toy light saber (sorry, Lucasfilm: laser sword) complete with sounds; attack them with CDs Shaun of the Dead-style; oh, and shoot them with a shotgun. Can’t forget that old chestnut.

I hope there’s more depth to the game but if there’s not I might buy it anyway. I had a blast just running around like some maniac with an electric guitar as a bludgeon, and the demo only gives access to a small portion of the mall. Incidentally the game actually points out when you start it that it’s nothing to do with Dawn of the Dead which is a filthy lie. Consider it an unofficial Dead Tetralogy game that isn’t shockingly bad.

Another high point is the graphics, as even in shiny 720p the game seemed to be running at a solid 60fps. This was maintained when the screen was absolutely full of zombies and fountains of blood which, since this is a Capcom game, bodes extremely well for a certain other upcoming game which may or may not have zombies in it. I’m not referring to Okami. Character models look good if you can ignore how Frank permanently looks like he’s smelt something bad.

The big downside? A game finally comes out and I’m going to be on holiday. Gaaah!

Games, Impressions, Movies & TV, PlayStation

Silent Hill Movie

21/04/2006 Olly Leave a comment

Silent Hill's Pyramid Head

I’ve been excited about Silent Hill’s film adaptation for a while now since the early material seemed to be not-completely-rubbish and it has a decent pedigree, but when I agreed to see it earlier in the week the scariest thing about it was the complete lack of reviews. The first one didn’t even appear until Thursday and that’s generally a bad sign (as with games), but when that turned out to be positive I felt a bit more optimistic.

Still, I feel a kind of obligation to see game-based films so off I went earlier tonight, coupled with the lowest possible expectations. They generally serve me well with anything that I think might disappoint. Except that rubbish new Star Wars, of course.

Resident Evil and Silent Hill are oft-compared and the difference ultimately boils down to that RE is about jump scares and action while SH is psychological horror, and the same can be said of the movies. Resident Evil was adapted into an action movie whereas Silent Hill is a trippy and macabre film, aiming to constantly unsettle. Certain elements are borrowed from classic horror (to mention the one I’m thinking of would probably spoil things) but above anything else the style is taken from the games. This looks like the games and looks fantastic doing it, mainly because it’s frankly too dark to show the seams in the CG transitions between plain old creepy Silent Hill and its hellacious counterpart.

Those who aren’t familiar with the games may find it slightly cryptic until a sudden torrent of exposition towards the end (even storytelling methods are borrowed from games, apparently), and even then the end can leave you hanging. It’s fans who will get the most from it since, as I said, it looks like one of the games and squeals of delight are likely when old favourites like the Pyramid Head show up. There isn’t a lot of the red stuff until the end, but when it shows up it doesn’t do anything by half, with the triangled terror himself providing the gory standout.

My main criticism is the script and acting, as at the beginning in particular it’s fairly bad and Sean Bean puts on a really poor accent throughout. This aside though, it’s definitely the best game-to-movie that I’ve seen thanks to adherence to the source material and a respectful translation all around. Whether or not you like it depends a lot of whether seeing Silent Hill in film form is appealing, but as long as that’s what you expect you should have a good time.