Tag Archives: Movie

Remembrance

There was a need to do this. From the United States we only hear boasts and BS, from other places we see political settings and it tires me, but the shock I felt last night was just too real for me, the world lost a giant actor. Sam Neil has left us. I have seen his works going all the way back to the 80s. So lets take a look. I first noticed him in The Omen III (1981) followed by Reilly, Ace of spies (1983) it was a different spy story and it was only later that I learned that the man had actually existed. After that Dead Calm (which I watched because Nicole Kidman was in it), Kane and Abel (1985). I loved the story and Sam made it a better series, and together with Peter Strauss it brought a great setting where these two actors brought a book to life. After that I think I watched The Hunt for Red October (1990) which I saw because of Sean Connery, but Sam Neil was well noticed. In the 90s he was noticed by me, although he was not the reason I saw the movies he was in. I saw Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992), The Piano, Sirens and then there was Jurassic Park (1993) after which Sam became the reason to see movies. First there was In the Mouth of Madness (1994) Event Horizon (1997) Merlin (1998) and Bicentennial Man (1999), which I actually preferred over Steven Spielbergs A.I. and Sam gave stellar performances every time. Looking back at these works I am amazed how much he influenced some of the choices of movies I made because of his involvement. As I see it, he made these movies great because of his collaboration with other actors. As I go through the list like The Dish and Jurassic Park III and Wimbledon I am noticing that I missed some of his works over time. Which makes me a little sad, but these were times that I could only squeeze 24 hours out of any day and choices needed to be made. I reckon we all noticed him on a Cameo in Thor: Ragnarok (together with Matt Damon) giving it all a fun moment. As far as I can tell, the last thing I saw him in was Thor: Love and Thunder. I have seen other movies with him after that, but as far as I can tell, it was the latest  setting I saw him in. Weirdly enough, I feel no deep mourning. When I think of him in these movies it merely brings a smile to my face. He really livened up the movies he worked on. And even now I still consider watching the Blu-ray of Event Horizon today. This movie has a nice little story behind it. In a scene where he sees his eyeless wife I yelped in the cinema and a friend told me that an entire wave of watchers reacted to my yelp. That moment really got to me. As such I end this story with: 

I raise my glass to you in salute to an amazing career in excellence for over 4 decades. Mr Neil it was an honour watching your work and perhaps we get to meet for real in the next stage of our lives. You will be missed on the big screen. And not to forget, my condolences to his family and friends. 

I wish you all a great day today.

Leave a comment

Filed under Media, movies

Dreamcast, a place

Yup, In succession to part one. I decided to think through the characters. I am not putting it all here (for obvious reasons) yet when you think it through, I set up the larger station in merely a few hours. As such, any Canadian TV channel can pick this up. The reason is simple and two fold. In the first there is a writers strike in the USA. I will not assist any TV station there whilst the strike is going on. The second is that this event plays in Toronto, it seems logical that a Canadian TV stations could have a go at this.

Vasileios
He is the main character, not much is known about him and in the beginning the setting is that he travelled in time. Over the course of the movie we get more and the end has a twist (as one expects). He is driven to solve this event for reasons unknown.

Olivia
She is the liaison officer connected to our main character. She sports a heavy Taurus Raging Hunter 357 Mag 7-Round Revolver. The gun is specific and this has a reason. Her father was a police officer who was killed in the line of duty. What she knows that other corrupt officers got him killed and she vowed to kill them with that gun. She is a crack shot, slightly rude mannered on speak and actions. She does genuinely care for justice and people. She cares for victims and she does not stand for bullshit. 

Michel Coulombe
He is a twist. I wanted to get the actual former director of the CSIS involved. This is largely an intelligence gathering operation, as such he would be a great consultant. Also, who is better equiped and trained to play head of the CSIS then the former director of the CSIS? From the beginning when our main character stops the initial terrorist event the CSIS gets involved and the fact that they were unaware that this was about to happen gives Vasileios a foot in the door.

Police Captain
The involved police captain is there to smooth things over and set the larger operation to get things done. I thought of John Larroquette or Patrick Labyorteaux to fill this role. The elected person is there to manage the police forces and to keep tabs on the two main characters.

MAGA
The nice part of these MAGA people is that they tend to be conspiracy theorists and that works for me. It is hard to find a decently believable opponent. The setting of the stage is that MAGA is ‘working’ with(or for) the Canadian Conservative Party. What none of them know is that MAGA is pushed by American Industrials to create enough panic and chaos so that America can push in and make Canada a republic. It adheres to the old golden rule ‘in confusion there is profit’ and with the US running out of space and resources expanding to the north is a simple business decision. I have set that stage in a few stages the conspiracy people, their support system, the conservative players and the conservative party. There needs to be clear separation so that the detection feels real. 

Unknown player
This person is unknown (for now) because I do not have the larger setting here. It is why there were two names for the police captain. The other one becomes the head of CSIS data analyses. I was thinking that they would have a data room with actual Palantir servers crunching the numbers. During the events we learn that data is ‘misplaced’ and this gets us to the corrupt police officers who were filling their pockets wherever they could, as such they are involved and we get to see Olivia being a crack shot. There is no denying that seeing a corrupt police officer executed is more satisfying than some organised crime figure (not by much though).

There might be some additional key people down the road, but I got this all done in under 4 hours (including the time for the first article (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2023/09/13/dreamcraft-the-specifics/

Location 1
This is Bloor–Yonge Station. Here we see the initial attack stopped. The detonation (with hydrogen cyanide) is stopped. The event would have killed all the people in the subway station and the tanks were large enough to flow the gas into the street, which would be a first chaos point. With the subways out of commission and a massive cornerstone of Toronto traffic stopped in the heart of the city would create massive amounts of panic. As this is stopped the CSIS enables Vasileios to proceed, but only with Olivia locked at the hip to him. This gets the police in the mix as well and the CSIS data centre will be looking over every byte of data, to see what they missed. 

Location 2
It is a house, and I think it should be in Rockwood village. It allows for a later link to business conferences and Mississauga. The house is the impact of a shootout between parties and our two characters. He is sporting a Cretan knife which he buys in an earlier scene. Olivia was unwilling to hand him a gun. The scene starts with them sneaking into the back and he starts silently and indiscriminately killing the people there. Olivia shoots three and calls for backup. We see the cellar has a bomb factory, the police shows up a minute later. Vasileios grabs a gun from the table and kills the police officers. He states that these cops are corrupt, at that point the police commissioner calls and states that the reinforcements are 10 minutes out. This convinces Olivia this is about more and we see all kinds of evidence that bombs were made. 

Location 3
the CSIS ‘server room’ where the data is crunched, the captain there is starting to find ‘mislabelled’ data and now he knows that there is a larger problem. He gets 3-4 most trusted people in a separate server room and they start crunching the data differently, which is time consuming, but they do not know what is missing. As the story continues we see the crunching of locations and people on every bit of data. 

There is of course more, but two locations are key to the story. Seems weird to give away the plot ahead of schedule. I am still mulling over the option of how to include the conservative party without getting slammed with slander (or whatever claim they will make), for me the larger reason was their ‘worshipping’ of Donald Trump and MAGA. I still need to figure out a setting where Olivia executes the three corrupt officers that killed her father. It needs to read that it could have been a justifiable killing or a mere execution and it could be seen as either way. I personally believe it spices up the story a bit at the end.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under movies, Stories