DusterBoy Posted March 17, 2011 Report Share Posted March 17, 2011 Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... Nic Cage was in "Wild At Heart"? I only remember Laura Dern and Willem Defoe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RexMundi Posted March 17, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2011 Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... Yeah that was Laura Dern back when she was good looking for a skinny chick. She hasn't aged well, then again, have any of us? Willem Defoe though, I still think is one of the most under used creepy guys in all of Hollywood. There has to be room for a Conan badguy played by Willem Defoe. Just wonder who in the lineup he could fit? ~Rex Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DusterBoy Posted March 17, 2011 Report Share Posted March 17, 2011 Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... Xaltotun? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RexMundi Posted March 18, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 18, 2011 Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... Hmmm...... He spends some time as a Skull Face and a Mummy type, but when he's got his meat on, Yeah, I can see Dafoe in that roll. He certainly has the presence to pull it off. We'll have to start the campaign for that for the sequel to this flick, heh. ~Rex Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DusterBoy Posted March 18, 2011 Report Share Posted March 18, 2011 Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... I always said that "Conan the Conqueror (Hour of the Dragon)" should be a movie. BTW - I think you and I have started to monopolise this thread, Rex. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RexMundi Posted March 18, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 18, 2011 Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... When the first real trailer hits that may change. Saw the teaser again today in front of Limetless. Again, good sound, and went over well with the crowd. ~Rex Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burrito Boy Posted March 19, 2011 Report Share Posted March 19, 2011 Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... Funny you guys should mention The Sword and the Sorcerer. I just ran across a copy of the novel, complete with pictures from the movie, at a thrift store about a week ago. I left it behind because I was low on cash and figured the other stuff I grabbed was more important. I'll have to go back and pick it up. Couldn't be any worse than the de Camp and Carter patsiche. Could it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RexMundi Posted March 19, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 19, 2011 Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... It's actually better. About the only REH pastich material I could tolerate that wasn't in Comic form was the Andrew J. Offutt Cormac Mac Art material. Sword and the sorcerer though was a fun movie and an entertaining book. You can even find the Red Band Trailer and such for the mostly sequel Tales of an Ancient Empire out there on the interwebz. Not sure if they actually finished the movie or not though. ~Rex Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burrito Boy Posted March 19, 2011 Report Share Posted March 19, 2011 Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... So far, the best Howard pastiche I've read is The Road of Kings by Karl Edward Wagner. Conan the Fearless by Steve Perry was also pretty good, especially since it contains something rare in Conan pastiche: description. I also thought Conan the Champion by John Maddox Roberts was pretty good. Certainly better than the junk by such "luminaries" as de Camp, Carter, and Jordan. As for non-Conan pastiche, the Solomon Kane stories that were finished off by Ramsey Campbell are well written. I haven't read Offutt's Cormac Mac Art stuff but I wasn't impressed by his Conan book The Sword of Skelos. And I've yet to read Conan the Rebel by Poul Anderson but I have high hopes for it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RexMundi Posted March 19, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 19, 2011 Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... Conan the Rebel is very good. Then again it's also Poul Anderson. If you want a Poul Anderson novel to really get a good fantasy vibe going, go find The Broken Sword. I Liked Wagner's stuff to but then, he wrote Kane so in effect he can do Conan, heh. Camp, Carter and especially Jordan I couldn't stand. Cambells Solomon Kane stuff I liked, and Offutts Conan was a bit weak but I always attributed that to Cormac just being a character he understood better. Steve Perry's Conan I haven't rooted out yet though I think I might actually have it in a box somewhere in my last batch of stuff I snagged from half priced books. Found a bunch of Perry material and I just grabbed it all (was looking for his Matador series actually). Haven't gotten that far into the box yet so not sure. It's hard to for me to read the Pastiche's though since I tend to re-read the REH material to stave of idle boredom and I never get tired of it. That also means it tends to be pretty fresh so I end up doing a comparisson as I read along. While Jordan was pretty good at scribbling up 400 pages of what can be sumerized as "Rand Al Thor gets cranky, He glares at one of the 5 Hot chicks he's sleeping with, Crosses the room, and takes a dump. Rand Al Thor is slightly less cranky", he shouldn't have been allowed within 500 miles of Conan. Gotta have description and depth and Like I said before, REH could put more descriptive elements in a paragraph then what many modern writers can do today in a 600 page novel. ~Rex Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DusterBoy Posted March 20, 2011 Report Share Posted March 20, 2011 Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... Jordan's Conan the Defender suffers from being written in bad pseudo-Shakespearean language, even though the story itself is good. One of the best Conan stories is Conan and the Emerald Lotus, written by John C Hocking because it looks and feels like Howard. Other than those two, plus the novelization of the movie, read when I was too young and ignorant to know any better, I haven't read any of the pastiches, although Wagner's Road of Kings sounds like it should be on my list. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burrito Boy Posted March 21, 2011 Report Share Posted March 21, 2011 Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... I do the same thing, Rex. That is, I read Howard almost constantly and make comparisons to his writing while reading, or at least attempting to read, the pastiche. Obviously, nobody comes close. Wagner and Anderson are fantastic writers--I've probably mentioned before that I consider Howard, Wagner, and Anderson the "holy trinity" of swords-and-sorcery writers--but I prefer them writing their own characters because that's when they're putting themselves into their own writing the same way Howard put himself into his. So although I enjoyed The Road of Kings, I like Bloodstone better. And while I'll probably like Conan the Rebel, I'll probably prefer The Broken Sword when I get around to reading it. (I'm pretty sure I have a copy but most of my books are in storage right now.) Conan the Defender? I just dug out my copy and it seems I got 157 pages into it before it drove me nearly insane. (I left the bookmark in just in case I ever get the courage to go back to the book.) I agree with you on the "bad pseudo-Shakesspearean language", DusterBoy. I think Jordan got that style from de Camp. Lines like "What need have we of such an one as that?" make me cringe. Then there's the "swearing" lines like "Erlik's Bowels and Bladder!" that I would assume were inspired by Carter. I could be wrong but it doesn't seem to matter much. The point is that nobody should be writing like either de Camp or Carter. Speaking of the, pseudo-Shakespearean language, I took a break from Conan the Defender--a minor break before I quit for good--to remind myself how Conan really talks. I picked "The God in the Bowl" at random. In it, Conan uses the word "twain", which features heavily in de Camp/Carter/Jordan pastiche only once. And I remember him using the word "lest" in another story, but that was after he became king and got all civilized. One of these days I'd like to go through all the Howard stories and see just how often Howard uses that kind of language. I'd bet there's a lot more of it in the Solomon Kane stories than in any Conan story. But it's actually appropriate in the SK stories and Howard writes it a damn sight better than his imitators. Speaking of imitators, one thing that really bothers me is how flippantly de Camp mentions "editing" Howard's stories in the intros to the old Ace paperback Conan books. What gives him the right to revise anything Howard wrote? Especially stories that were good enough to be published in the first place. Hell, even a Howard fragment is head and shoulders above any pastiche de Camp or Carter ever wrote. It just cheeses me off so bad. One of these days I might even start "editing" the pastiche just to give Howard a rest and make his imitators spin in their graves instead. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RexMundi Posted March 21, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 21, 2011 Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... Re-Edit the Pastiche....I'd say that could be done on the "Does it Blend" series, heh. ~Rex Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DusterBoy Posted March 22, 2011 Report Share Posted March 22, 2011 Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... I'm seriously thinking about re-writing "Conan of the Isles" because the original stinks so much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susano Posted March 22, 2011 Report Share Posted March 22, 2011 Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... I'm seriously thinking about re-writing "Conan of the Isles" because the original stinks so much. It reads like a bad D&D adventure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RexMundi Posted March 22, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 22, 2011 Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... Is there any other sort, heh. I think I would rate Conan of the Isles as the worst of the Pastiche. Seriously, that's old King Conan, one could have done far far far better for a novel then that without even trying hard. ~Rex Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DusterBoy Posted March 23, 2011 Report Share Posted March 23, 2011 Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... "Isles" was the worst? What about "Conan of Aquilonia"? I hear that's meant to be the absolute worst. I hope the shade of Robert Howard is beating the living stuffing out of the ghost of L Sprague de Camp for screwing up his work so badly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susano Posted March 23, 2011 Report Share Posted March 23, 2011 Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... "Isles" was the worst? What about "Conan of Aquilonia"? I hear that's meant to be the absolute worst. I hope the shade of Robert Howard is beating the living stuffing out of the ghost of L Sprague de Camp for screwing up his work so badly. Which one had him a sex slave of a big-breasted African Amazon queen? Wait, was 'Aquilonia' the one where he and his son go back to said Amazonian kingdom, meet his daughter by said queen and then run into lizard people? (I recall his son figures it out when he sees the girl he's going to bed reflection in the polished steel of his breastplate.) Still, 'Isles' was really bad, since he loses his whole crew in the first chapter or so, gets tossed overboard, has to fight a wandering monster (the giant octopus), and then wanders into the city to cause trouble. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Escafarc Posted March 23, 2011 Report Share Posted March 23, 2011 Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... You have to give those book some love for keeping the Conan name out there in the public view. Without them there might not be as much interest. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RexMundi Posted March 23, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 23, 2011 Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... Looking at this flick so far I've seen elements/lines taken from various REH sources. Let's hope they avoid pastiche sources, heh. That being said though, I still have a soft spot for a lot of the Thomas/BWS stuff. There is some material that deserves a resurection. ~Rex Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RJB Posted March 30, 2011 Report Share Posted March 30, 2011 Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... For what it's worth? I read non-Howard Conan the way I read non-Doyle Sherlock Holmes. Which is not at all. And with all the material that Hollyweird could work with, it's only the anime version that chose to do somethin like Red Nails. THATS the only Conan Im looking forward to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RexMundi Posted March 30, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 30, 2011 Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... Heh, I read it all, but then I'm Crazy for Conan, heh. Now there's a breakfast cereal for you. The Red Nails animated movie though.....still got hopes for it. ~Rex Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burrito Boy Posted March 30, 2011 Report Share Posted March 30, 2011 Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... Conan of the Isles is pretty bad but I'd have to go with Conan the Buccaneer being the worst. But then it's been years since I read either and I'd rather not go back and check to see if I'm right. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lawnmower Boy Posted March 30, 2011 Report Share Posted March 30, 2011 Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... Which one had him a sex slave of a big-breasted African Amazon queen? .. That's terrible! Do you have an ISBN number so that I can loathe a hard copy? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DusterBoy Posted March 31, 2011 Report Share Posted March 31, 2011 Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... Do you mean Queen of the Black Coast? Although I don't think you could call him a "sex slave" in that one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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