DungeonsAndDragons Tagged Articles at Cinematical

There are many directors who I think should be barred from making films, but Courtney Solomon is near the top of the list. He disappointed gamers everywhere with Dungeons & Dragons (some people humorously feel it is worth watching), a movie even he admits is awful, and then tried to redeem himself with the not-much-better An American Haunting. As head of After Dark Films, he has gotten into more than one controversy regarding his advertising practices -- going so far as to be made an example of by the MPAA -- and still hasn't even put out a decent-enough release to make the company worth Lionsgate's trouble. Now the director is looking to annoy us some more by attempting to revolutionize the zombie genre, a plan that he claims is desired by horror fans.

Solomon isn't revealing the title for this proposed movie, which he thankfully won't be directing, but describes it as a "zombie version of Underworld," which sounds bad even if you like Underworld. Worse, though, is his explanation that the zombies in this movie will be fast and emotional, something he says is completely new for the creatures (did he not see the running zombies in the Dawn of the Dead remake or the seemingly conflicted zombies in Land of the Dead?). I'm all for new takes on the genre, but I hope Solomon has more ideas than this. Supposedly the movie will feature a whole new lore for zombies (actually, he calls them part human, part zombie, which is redundant, I think) inspired by conversations had on the web between Solomon's people and real horror geeks, but unless the movie has a good sociological undercurrent -- as the best zombie movies do -- the tweaking of the genre is simply an unnecessary attempt to create something original. But if Solomon truly wants to do something original and to please us movie fans, he needs to make a good movie.

We all have our guilty pleasures. At Cinematical we even bravely expose them to our readers. Sometimes they involve movies we just have an inexplicable affection for. Other times, it's the old case of a movie being so bad its good (read: funny). But rarely does a writer present a guilty pleasure so directly and with such clear evidence that I go out and give that movie a second viewing. And yet, I've received more than enough cause to re-watch Dungeons and Dragons, the role-playing game adaptation from director Courtney Solomon, thanks to a piece by Richard Pilbeam. Pilbeam has offered "64 Reasons to Watch Dungeons and Dragons" on his site Frying Bear, and every one of the reasons is good enough on it's own. He cites specific parts of the movie (including hilarious scene captures of Jeremy Irons), special features from the DVD (including the 2 audio commentaries featuring Solomon), the "making of" book and random facts about the production. Now, I've never played D&D, so I can't say that I appreciate all of the ways in which to laugh at the movie, and I can only imagine how much funnier it is to true geeks out there (our own Mark Beall, perhaps?). The only thing better than Pilbeam's list to enhance Dungeons and Dragons would be a commentary from the MST3K guys (this way or that way). ...

[via Fark.com]

More on Solomon's career:

Courtney Solomon is Glad to Get That D&D Thing Behind Him

I'll confess right up front the main reason behind my desire to write up this story is I find the entire scenario particularly amusing. I grew up as a gamer of many fields; I was a button masher, a card flopper, and a dice chucker,* and anyone who spent any notable amount of time around this scene prior to 2000 most assuredly remembers the humorously bad attempt made at a Dungeons and Dragons movie five or so years back. The movie was roundly mocked by critics, and many fans of the RPG were even harder on the film than the critics had been.

Well the director of said fiasco is back on the scene working on a new horror flick called An American Haunting; and one of his primary goals with the film is to overcome the terrible memories and reputation he got stuck with after the profound failure of his first film. In a recent talk with Sci Fi Wire, director Courtney Solomon admitted "I wished I could have made a better movie ... I have nothing to defend. They were right, I was wrong. It is what it is. Everybody makes mistakes, and I got on the bicycle and hope to keep on driving." Solomon said he has greater control over this film, and he hopes to he has confidence in his ability to move on from his D&D days. For his sake, I hope he's right; nobody wants to be the next Uwe Boll.

*I still dabble in some of these when I have the time, although currently what little free time I have for gaming seems to be occupied by assembling small plastic boats and declaring myself to be a pirate captain.