Page 27 of 36

Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

Posted: Sun Jun 04, 2017 8:43 pm
by Morthrai
Linden wrote: Sun Jun 04, 2017 3:58 pm Lee, if you get round to it you might enjoy the appearance of cult favourites Tim Thomerson and Brion James, although one reviewer's comment that they both resemble a couple of middle aged divorcees hitting the singles circuit after their 20 year marriages have gone down the toilet is sadly all too on the money.
My mate Joe was all over the "Trancers" movies back in the day so I'm aware of some of Thomerson's work. As for Brion James I'm sure he's high up in the "that guy" recognition stakes along with Al Leong and Danny Trejo, even with people who haven't seen Blade Runner for some inexcusable reason :)

"Nothing is worse than having an itch you can never scratch!"

Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2017 8:19 am
by Linden
Morthrai wrote: Sun Jun 04, 2017 8:43 pm
My mate Joe was all over the "Trancers" movies back in the day so I'm aware of some of Thomerson's work. As for Brion James I'm sure he's high up in the "that guy" recognition stakes along with Al Leong and Danny Trejo, even with people who haven't seen Blade Runner for some inexcusable reason :)

"Nothing is worse than having an itch you can never scratch!"
Thomerson's pretty good in the first Trancers - got a touch of the late period Phillip Marlowe about him. The second film was all right, but I think diminishing returns had started to set in by then. Didn't bother with the other sequels.

Brion James memorable as the one armed "nice" Cajun in Southern Comfort as well. Apparently him and Thomerson were good mates in real life having been in the forces together.

Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

Posted: Thu Jun 08, 2017 8:29 pm
by Morthrai
Okay, I watched Nemesis and there's definitely a a lot there that can be extracted for gaming purposes. I thought its biggest fault wasn't the low budget, but that it keeps changing direction every 15 minutes or so. Felt like a movie made by editing two random different episodes of a TV show together!

Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 5:23 am
by Linden
Morthrai wrote: Thu Jun 08, 2017 8:29 pm Okay, I watched Nemesis and there's definitely a a lot there that can be extracted for gaming purposes. I thought its biggest fault wasn't the low budget, but that it keeps changing direction every 15 minutes or so. Felt like a movie made by editing two random different episodes of a TV show together!
I thought it looked great and made good use of some unusual locations. By all accounts narrative coherence has never been director Albert Pyun's strongpoint, although he claims producers often remove his editiorial control. Hmmm. As for Nemesis it seems to me the writer doesn't understand the difference between a cyborg and an android and has a something of a tin ear when it comes to dialogue. "Break the law...go to hell" isn't much of a catchphrase, and a gang of freedom fighters called the Red Army Hammerheads is just p*** poor.

Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 3:45 pm
by ReHerakhte
Ah Brion James and Tim Thomerson, I think I watched a few dozen (or more) movies in the 1980s-1990s that they were in. I remember James mostly for being a bad guy in most flicks.

But anyway, I was finally able to buy copies of seasons 2 & 3 of Continuum and in an effort to refresh my memory I started watching season 1 again. This time around I paid more attention to some of the background detail for the parts set in the future. The details I'm going to mention are more along the lines of "flavour/colour" elements.
The central character, Keira Cameron, is a female police officer from 2077 who gets dumped back to 2012 but we get to see a number of scenes of her in the world of 2077. The home she and her husband live in, is an apartment but considering he is some middle management figure in the main corporation we can probably safely assume they have the money for a "good" apartment...

The apartment is obviously one for the wealthy, however (I'm surmising) due to the lack of natural resources, it's sparce compared to what we would expect. Bare concrete walls, almost the entire apartment (they're polished concrete, but bare concrete none-the-less). They don't have large amounts of obviously expensive furnishings. Everyday food and drink is in the form of foil packets and the real display of wealth is in the wine rack with real bottled wine on display. From this I'm taking the idea that it's not simply a fashion trend to finish a building with bare concrete, it's probably (again, I'm surmising) done to reduce materials costs, even for the wealthy because natural resources are just too scarce to waste on such things unless you have more than the usual "wealthy" income.

Even for the wealthy, running water is a luxury and all clothes washing is done by dry cleaning methods to prevent the use of water. Through the first season, you can see some of the characters from 2077 enjoying a simple glass of water, really enjoying it, adding further emphasis to the lack of natural resources.

The less well off appear to live in apartment bocks as well, but they are tiny by comparison, essentially the same area as two rooms from the wealthy apartment. The poor appear to get their food from meal packages rather than as separate items of food that you would typically prepare in a kitchen to make a meal. The poorer apartments can also be seen to be in the process of being "run down", peeling paint, graffiti (although it's often electronic graffiti rather than paint), almost as though the corporations that control everything are skimping on the maintenance.

The most powerful man in the city appears to call an aerostat "home". He doesn't simply occupy the best apartment in the tallest building in the city, he doesn't even live "in" the city, he floats above it all.

But back to Cameron, as a police officer she has access to some advanced tech as would be expected but in this case it goes deep into cyberpunk territory. She has a brain implant that allows her to record, audio, visual and olfactory information for the purpose of evidence collection although it actually records everything and anything she see has seen, heard and smelled. All police officers can store up to 36 hours (I think it was 36, definitely 30+ but maybe 34...) before their headware is full and they need to "dump" the info collected to the central police server.

Police officers are also equipped with a HUD system directly into their eyes that allows magnifying an image they are viewing, gives them thermal tracking capability along with other vision modes and allows them access to any programmes installed and any info stored in their brain system (including, I think, access to their suit - more on that later). Their communications is via a tightly encrypted radio system that again, is part of the cyberware implanted into their head. Although it does suffer some interference in some areas, it appears to have quite a long range (as in city wide rather than dozens of kilometres).

By far the most impressive tech the police officers are issued however, is their service uniform.This suit is "grown" from carbon nano-tubes and has a fully intergrated computer system that allows changing the colour of the uniform, allows charging the outside of the suit with electricity and allows the suit to render its wearer almost invisible (I figure this is probably some sort of light bending tech as it's not the usual Hollywood complete invisibility sort of thing, the officer is visible as a sort of heat haze effect). The suit also provides protection from projectiles. For high risk situations the officers also make use of a helmet although this isn't explored to the same level as the suit it during the show.

Again, I'd say at the least, season 1 is worth watching. Even though I only watched it less than a fortnight ago, I'm enjoying watching it again. Time will tell if seasons 2 & 3 live up to the promise of the first. And if I can ever find some shop here that actually can get season 4 in stock, I'll be buying that as well because it apparently wraps up the entire story (due to the show being canned in season 4, even though the creator had plans for anything up to 10 seasons) and I would like to see how it ends, even if the later seasons do devolve into typical "police procedural" episodes.

Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2017 1:56 am
by scottm
Citadel

Banshee Chapter

Both will inspire you to run something horrible.

Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2017 8:28 am
by ReHerakhte
Continuum TV series again...
I'm happy to report that Continuum didn't devolve into "just another police procedural show" in Season Two. There's some more glimpses of future life and the grand conspiracies behind everything. Now, onto Season Three...

Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2017 6:28 pm
by Morthrai
scottm wrote: Fri Jul 07, 2017 1:56 am Citadel

Banshee Chapter

Both will inspire you to run something horrible.
I have both of these but as yet I have watched neither of them. I must rectify that soon!

Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2017 1:27 am
by ReHerakhte
I don't know how many fans of Neill Blomkamp's work might be members here but at the risk of telling peope what they already know, Blomkamp is a movie maker with particularly strong 3D animation & visual techniques and is the person behind the movie District 9.
Before District 9, Neill made a number of futuristic shorts and ads and worked as a 3D animator on such TV shows as Stargate SG-1 and Dark Angel.

Very recently (as in sometime in 2017), Blomkamp started his own film production company, Oats Studios, and has released a number of shorts to highlight his particular skills. In quick succession Oats Studios has released a number of shorts through YouTube and also the game/software platform Steam but also on their own website found here https://oatsstudios.com/
The desire of Oats Studios is to highlight particular stories and if the public likes them enough to crowdfund them, to produce full length versions of those stories.

So by now you might be thinking, "What's Kevin blathering on about with this post, where's the movie?" - two shorts in particular are worth watching from a Dark Conspiracy point of view with a third being inspiration material if things go really bad in the DarkCon world.
The first two: -
Firebase
Zygote and yes, that is Dakota Fanning as the female lead.
The third: -
Rakka and yes that is Sigourney Weaver in the lead female role.

On a less serious note, the Cooking With Bill series is amusing, (particularly if you dislike cooking show info-mercials) as is the short God.

Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

Posted: Sat Nov 11, 2017 9:19 am
by Linden
Probably the last thing the world needs is yet more "found footage" movies but I rather enjoyed The Borderlands (2013) in which a team employed by the Vatican investigate strange goings on in an English West Country Church.

It's often very funny particularly in the first half hour, as a tetchy christian brother and a hyperactive computer geek are forced to share a cottage while they await the arrival of their superior from Rome. There's maybe a hint of sitcoms Peep Show and Father Ted in their edgy but mutually dependent relationship. Things turn a lot darker once they start poking around the church though.

In terms of DC tropes there's empathic phenomena and an ancient-evi- once-buried-but-now-reawakened. The film's characters could also provide some useful pointers to playing priests, parapsychologists and gizmoid - all potential PC types but ones that perhaps take a back seat to the more rough and ready archetypes the game often features (check out all those pictures of rough looking gun toting dudes in the 1st edition rulebook).

Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2018 7:25 pm
by Linden
At the weekend watched "Tank 432". A group of mercenaries in an unnamed post-Iraq conflict are hounded by a mysterious enemy and take refuge inside an abandoned APC. Cooped up for hours on end they start to get on each other's nerves and their previous exposure to a strange red chemical powder makes them hallucinate.

It's had some excoriating reviews claiming it's totally incoherent but I didn't think it was that bad. A mash up of Dog Soldiers, A Field in England and Jacob's Ladder. It is a little ragged in places but if you've seen the aforementioned movies it's not that hard to figure out what's going on.

What I would say is it is very coarse in places. Almost certainly the sweariest film I've seen and I'm told the ex-military personnel who worked on it actually asked the director if he could tone down the bad language as they thought it was excessive. There's also a truly revolting scene where one of the mercs is "caught short" in the driver's seat of the APC.

Originally titled In the Belly of the Bulldog - I'm guessing Tank 432 was substituted because it sounds snappier even though the FV432 isn't a tank. I think I prefer the original title for all that it might be a little unwieldy.

Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2018 8:59 am
by Linden
Last night watched Aussie pigsploitation horror Razorback. Been a while since I'd last seen it and I thought it stood up pretty well. It struck me that it had more than a few Dark Conspiracy elements in its make up: Desolate rural setting, Igors (the barmy Baker brothers), Dobies and Gidgets (the town's people), lots of guns, a monstrous customised truck, retrotechnology (the locater systems) the giant critter of the title, and lurking in the background a sinister corporation (Pet Pak). A good film in its own right too. Don't think it got much love on its release. As British director Alex Cox pointed out when showing it as part of his Moviedrome series it offers a very dark vision of Australia, perhaps one that people didn't want to see at the time. It certainly has a lot more common with Wake in Fright than, say, Crocodile Dundee.

Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2018 2:45 pm
by Morthrai
Agreed, "Razorback" definitely has plenty of Dark Conspiracy elements. It also features Aussie stalwart and former Tony Hancock sidekick Bill Kerr who genuinely looks like he was born to play this role 8)

Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2018 12:45 pm
by Linden
Morthrai wrote: Sat Mar 03, 2018 2:45 pm It also features Aussie stalwart and former Tony Hancock sidekick Bill Kerr who genuinely looks like he was born to play this role 8)
Yes, he's really good as the Captain Ahab figure. I gather he had a pretty solid career as a serious actor on returning to his native Australia. I seem to remember seeing him in Gallipoli.

Seems to be a sequel/remake in the works. Voicover sounds amateurish I thought but the presence of Chris Haywood from the original film may be cause for optimism.

I did read the original novel by Peter Brennan and thought it was absolute cack. Just goes to show duff books can still make good films.

Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 7:16 pm
by tartex
I get a similar vibe to the future-retroism of Dark Conspiracy from the movie It Follows.

Sure, it's about teenagers not trained professionals, but the way the wider world is not spoken about, and at the same time seems eerily underpopulated.

But especially the mix of vintage design elements like furniture, TVs and some cars paired with some futuristic consumer tech (the clamshell ebook reader) creates a vibe that I always associated with some of the original art in Dark Conspiracy.

Actually the movie made me finally purchase Dark Conspiracy.