The week in review: Casting, Video Games, Romance, and Music.

This is the second week of the "new" blog for A Pius Man.  While the new posting schedule is not even a whole two weeks old, the blog has already had over six hundred views thus far.



Which means that these two weeks have seen more blog views than all but two months of the blog's entire 13-month run.



So, something's going right.

Check out Dies Irae. Seriously

The first blog entry was a suggestion that, given the technology and the writing of video games nowadays, maybe I should try pitching A Pius Man as one. Okay, maybe not.  In music that day, there was the heavy electric guitar of Dragonforce, with the game soundtrack for Halo, followed by.... Mozart?



Yes, Mozart.



Did I mention that my music posts were going to be a little schizophrenic? No? Sorry about that.



Tuesday's primary blog was a list of my cast, and who should probably play them if the book was ever a) published and b) ever made into a movie. 



I was especially interested the more I examined the prospect of Summer Glau as Maureen McGrail.  Dang, that woman can move. Why she hasn't been allowed to really dance since Serenity is beyond me.



That music blog was an introduction to the world of filk with Tom Smith, some more Halo, a bit more Dragonforce, and a heavily violin piece in Cruxshadow's Dragonfly.



And then I discussed more books I read .... Romance? Really? Yes.



But, since this is me, the romance novels I read involve automatic weapons, murder mysteries .... they boil down into novels that have romantic elements, but have been doomed into the romance sections because of lousy, flowery artwork and editors with an inability to give the novels halfway decent names.



Though I am reluctant to argue with a book title like No Mercy.



Wednesday's music blog was a little easier: Two Steps from Hell, a song about the world's first hyper beer, some more Halo and a touch more Dragonforce.



Thursday was almost a recap, musicwise. Tom Smith's Operation: Desert Storm, a new version of an old song, the theme from Doctor Who, and a movie someone made to a Two Steps from Hell piece.



All in all, it was a fun week.  I'll see what I can do about keeping it alive a little longer. The pace isn't too strenuous just yet.



However, I should mention a few things.



At Examiner.com, I did a "how to" article on escaping an arm grab, using attitude as self defense, and an article on my favorite fighting style.

A Pius Man: The Video Game?

I'm starting to think that if I ever wanted A Pius Man to come to a screen, it might be a computer screen.

A while back, I did a blog post on who might play who within a movie for A Pius Man ... a year later, the post needs updating. But that'll be tomorrow.

But, in the long run, it does become a matter of ... well ... why bother? Seriously, even if the novel were picked up tomorrow, and made into a bestselling novel,

Why? Well, I believe that Hollywood is in trouble.

Click the video for a few seconds. About a minute.



This is a video game.

At E3 this year, everyone got a sample of how Lara Croft, and the Tomb Raider franchise, have been revamped. While the games were fun, that's not what interests me right now. For almost 32 seconds, I wasn't entirely certain that I had gotten a commercial for a video game. I had honestly thought that they ditched the idea of Olivia Wilde as Lara Croft, and gone for a completely unknown actress.

Last week, I mentioned the epic writing in the Halo video game franchise. While "only" a video game, it has delivered books, movies, all of which were fairly good.

However, more and more I see that Halo is not a one-off. It's not alone on the video game merry-go-round of awesome story telling.  Most video games have been suitably epic for a while now, and getting more so all the time.

Let's look at a game called Mass Effect.  It is an even more sprawling video game, where personalities impact the story more and more as you play along. The basic premise is standard for a Doctor Who episode: one character has to stop the all life in the entire universe from being killed.

Aside from the fact that this, too, has spawned a few other novels, click on the trailer.



Now, tell me that this trailer isn't more epic than the last three Star Wars films. Which, granted, isn't hard, but you get the idea.

Sadly, even this trailer, for a Star Wars video game, is more epic than anything George Lucas has down lately.




It has gotten to the point where big name professional writers have been brought in to write the games ... sometimes, games based off of other novels.  For example, Peter David, writer of practically everything in the comic book universe, and more besides, wrote out a script for the video game Shadow Complex, and even the upcoming Spider-man: The Edge of Time.  Shadow Complex is actually based off of Orson Scott Card's novel Empire.

Consider, for a moment, the possibility of having the graphics of the Lara Croft trailer at the beginning, the epic scope of a Halo or a Mass Effect, and a professional writer like Peter David or Orson Scott Card.


And actors? Sure, actors are helpful ... they can supply the voice work. And many Hollywood actors are already there. Alan Tudyk, Adam Baldwin, and Nathan Fillion had a veritable Firefly cast reunion in the Halo franchise -- not to mention Michelle Rodriguez, Keith David,  and General Zod himself, Terence Stamp.  With the Mass Effect Franchise, the list is even more comprehensive: Seth Green, Martin Sheen, Keith David (again), Lance Henriksen, Marina Sirtis  Dwight Schultz .....

I'm going to stop there

At the current rate of the technology, if Hollywood isn't careful, the only work for actors might be voice work.

At the end of the day, if someone wanted to make A Pius Man into a movie ... I might hold out for an option to make it into a video game.