Animated Tails are coming

Samuel take a look at the British film called Dog Soldiers.

The basic motion werewolf rig they use in that film is pretty similar, for higher detail shots they used animatronics but the werewolves in that film look amazing.

I would provide a link but it's considerably NSFW with all the swearing and gore, however the whole movie is available on youtube

Heh, if I'm gonna' watch a whole movie for free, I might as well go the whole way and pirate it properly

Seriously, though, this looks like something worth looking into. The werewolves I've seen look a bit goofy, though, I guess because they're supposed to be monsters, but from the few Wikipedia snippets I saw, that woman's werewolf costume actually looks more convincing, strangely. Then again, these werewolves seem to run, which is cool. I'll probably have to see the whole movie to tell, though. Problem is... I am EXTREMELY apprehensive of watching British movies, especially after Reign of Fire (yeah, I have an evil memory). Americans do action and horror movies right, whereas most of the British movies I've seen spend too much time worrying about introducing enough foul language, blood, guts and bad writing as they can manage and not enough making the movie actually cool.

I mean it's soldiers fighting bloody dragons! How do you screw that up?!?

I should probably give Underworld a shot, too. I suspect the werewolves there would be animatronic, but I hear it's a good movie, anyway. After Blade 2, though, I kind of lost interest in vampires and werewolves.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

dude, Blade was Awesome, s'wrong with you?
/e points daywalker sword at you.

I'm glad we're getting animated tails, even though I have no immediate use for them, I just hope it means we're closer to getting backpack/jetpack/quiver items and eventually perhaps some arm/thigh accessories (pouches, holsters, knives, grenades, etc.).

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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow Problem is... I am EXTREMELY apprehensive of watching British movies, especially after Reign of Fire (yeah, I have an evil memory). Americans do action and horror movies right, whereas most of the British movies I've seen spend too much time worrying about introducing enough foul language, blood, guts and bad writing as they can manage and not enough making the movie actually cool.

Wow, what a gross generalisation. I think you need to watch more British movies, Sam. A bad movie is a bad movie, but I'm not sure you can pin that on a specific cultural identity just because a movie was supposedly set in Britain and had several Brit actors in the cast. Besides, directors tend to be responsible for the tone/style of a movie and Reign of Fire had a US director at the helm. It certainly didn't feel like a British movie to me (shoehorning in the US characters, presumably to appeal to a US audience, made it feel distinctly un-British, imho), but then personally it didn't feel much like a Hollywood movie either style-wise. I don't think Reign of Fire knew what it was, and that was part of the problem.

Hollywood/American action movies are shallow, sex-obsessed, unfunny, CGI showreels full of explosions, plot holes, esoteric cultural references and product placement... is something I could say if I'd only watched a selective amount of Bay/Bruckheimer movies, and/or anything with Will Smith in it, and not much else - but even if that was true, and represented how I felt, I think saying it candidly would leave a sour taste in my mouth (in truth many of my favourite movies came out of Hollywood, and mostly makes up for all the shallow tripe I've waded through to find the good stuff).

If you don't like British culture (or slang) and gore then Dog Soldiers is probably not going to appeal to you, but imho it's a much better pure werewolf movie than Ginger Snaps and a better horror movie than An American Werewolf in London (as classic as that movie is). It has a good balance of action, horror and character interaction - with British black/grim humour, which suits the horror theme better than Hollywood style one-liners would. There's even a big explosion in there for the US audience (yes, I'm teasing any US posters reading this ). But if you need lots of explosions and CGI (i.e. a huge budget) to make a movie "cool" then no, you probably won't like it - it has gritty British style to it (which I prefer, for a horror movie anyway), not a glossy Hollywood one. Considering how relatively small the budget was (£20million I heard - that's fairly big budget for an almost wholly British movie) I think director Neil Marshall made it go a long way and the results are pretty impressive, imho - certainly better than, say, Van Helsing with its $160million budget (roughly 5 times as much as Dog Soldiers) and dodgy CGI. Dog Soldiers is my favourite werewolf movie and it's one of my favourite horror-themed movies of all time.

Underworld's werewolves are a mix of animatronic suits and CGI (the sequels used a lot more CGI) - they do look pretty good (though the hybrid looks horrible, imho). The movies are watchable enough despite some poor dialogue and wooden acting (mostly from British lead actresses Kate Beckinsale and Rhona Mitra, though Michael Sheen's charisma more than makes up for it and it's also fun to see Bill Nighy hamming it up and chewing scenery), but the story isn't that deep/complex even though it's obviously trying to be. In a lot of ways I preferred Rise of the Lycans (which is more of a prequel) over the first two movies, but they're all fairly close in quality/tone, so if you don't like one then there's not much point continuing to watch the sequels. I liked them enough to buy them on DVD and have watched them all several times. They're definitely Hollywood movies in style, though a lot of the cast are British, so I'm not sure if that makes them Brit movies for you, Sam

Hey, don't jump on me for hating on the Brits. I don't I just prefer American movies as a general thing, both for budget reasons and cultural reasons. And I'm not even American, nor have I ever been to the US. In fact, I'm from Eastern Europe.

But for what it's worth, British movies do tend to be a lot more gritty, which mirrors the movies made by my own countrymen, and it's a style I don't like at all. I've seen a few British movies, I just can't name most of them, and having spent some time in the UK, it's just a mentality I prefer in movies. It's the same reason I don't watch movies from my own country, and refuse to acknowledge them as great no matter how many international awards they receive. They're just too depressing to bother with.

That's not to say Dog Soldiers is a bad movie. I honestly wouldn't know, not having seen it, and again, I never said I won't see it because it's British and therefore inherently evil. It looks interesting, though I have to question why the trailer for a horror movie would boast about its humour (which I didn't actually see in any of the clips I checked), so I'll probably try and spare some time to give the thing a once-over. After Hollywood's bastardisation of Sherlock Holmes, a bit more actual Britishness would do me well

Mind you, I have a LOT of stereotypes, preconceptions and established notions that I use to determine which movie I want to see and which I don't, but none of them reflect on the quality of the actual movie, only on how likely I am to see it. For instance, I never saw Titanic, and despite all the hate directed towards it, I can't say whether or not it was a bad movie because I didn't see it. I just knew it was a movie I wouldn't go out of my way to see, specifically.

Believe me, American cinema has produced a lot of cliches, itself, but I'm just a sucker for a big-budget movie. Nothing kills the mood faster than budget special effects, which is why I've all but stopped watching sci-fi series. Even the good ones just irk me. Again, that's not to take away from the movies' and series' quality or the dignity of their country of origin, merely to express my willingness to see them.

And I have to say - I'm not exactly an avid movie-watcher. I never saw Star Wars Episode III, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, any of the Super Man movies and so on, and a lot of movies I wouldn't have checked out if friends hadn't asked me to go to the cinema, like Sherlock Holmes, the latter X-Men movies, the latest Spider-Man movie and so on, or hadn't brought me on DVD, like the sequel to the Incredible Hulk, which ended up being a much better movie than the original mockery. Pretty much Avatar and Iron Man are the only movies I specifically went out of my way to see, and I've recently been trying to track down Aliens without the extra scenes, but because I live in bizarro world, everyone thinks the movie is worthless without them, so I can't find a decent theatrical version.

I WILL be looking into Underworld, though, for the simple fact that at first it looked like yet one more push to cash in on the vampire craze of the time, but I've consistently heard good things about it. I do NOT intend to see the sequel.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Btt:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6efDVkmI5pc

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Originally Posted by BeyondReach Everytime I see mention of the absolute pile of filth it sends me into a blind rage. When did Holmes and Watson ever get into a fight? Holmes would probably collapse in the middle of a fight being a cocaine addict who spends most of his time sitting in the dark, smoking crack and playing the violin (is it the violin? I can't remember that well anymore). Watson is just a guy, an average man, a doctor and as I seem to remember, abhors violence. That movie was complete....nonsense. It is the most horrible thing Hollywood has ever done.

Actually, in canon, Holmes is presented as almost preternaturally strong and fit. The specific example that comes to mind is in "The Adventure of the Speckled Band"--a visitor bends a fireplace poker into a curve in an attempt to intimidate Holmes. After the man leaves, Holmes casually straightens it again (a more difficult task than bending the iron rod in the first place).

As for fighting, Holmes battled Moriarty directly above Reichenbach Falls. Holmes explained his victory in that fight as the result of his mastery of a martial art--"baritsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling, which has more than once been very useful to me". The implication is that he is a trained fighter, and has had occasion to use that training on a number of occasions. ("Baritsu" never existed, by the way--it's speculated that it was a reference or typo related to "bartitsu", a mixed martial art introduced in England not long before the publication of "The Adventure of the Empty House".)

Watson, for his part, was a war veteran and an excellent marksman. Despite his role as an assistant surgeon, he was wounded in battle at least once in Afghanistan, and possibly twice. Whatever his personal feelings on violence, his service revolver saw use fairly often in the original stories. He was also a former collegiate athlete, though he feared his physical condition had deteriorated since.

Certainly, the movie was far more action-intense than the originals, but I didn't really find the characterizations that much of a stretch, and I rather liked the way they portrayed Holmes' advantage in a fight as the result of his ability to plan detailed strategies in an instant.

It's your prerogative to hate it, of course (I certainly hate some movies with far less reason than you seem to have here), but I disagree with your reasons for doing so. I suspect that you're bothered less by differences from the canon than by differences from earlier adaptations (which have no more intrinsic validity than this one).
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So, animated tails! At least one of my characters should get to ditch the piece of wire sticking out of her spine, and that's a good thing!

Well, for bipedal I've always liked the way the did Pumpkinhead, granted they had to work within the constraints on what human anatomy would allow.