The Italian Job (1969)

When I say “The Seventies was the best decade for crime films,” your answer should be “No shit, Sherlock.” The French Connection, Dirty Harry, The Godfather, The Taking of Pelham One-Two-Three, Night Moves, The Gauntlet, pretty much anything with Michael Caine… speaking of whom, was in a classic of crime cinematography on the border year of 1969. That would be The Italian Job, a heist flick known for its classic car chases.

So, The Italian Job. After an intro scene where the Mob bumps off some guy in Italy, dapper gentleman gangster Charlie Croker (Michael Caine) is released from prison, and immediately sets off on a new job. This time, a heist in Italy, finishing the job planned by the guy killed in the opening sequence: making off with $4 million in gold bars the Chinese are delivering. With the aid of Mr. Bridger (Noël Coward), still living in a luxuriant prison cell, and his girlfriend Lorna (Margaret Blye), Croker assembles a team to pull off this heist. It includes a number of screwballs, such as Professor Peach (Benny Hill), a computer whiz with a thing for large ladies. They’re walking a fine line, avoiding both the police and the Mafia; with the roaring of engines and crashing of the Italian transit system’s mainframe, they’re off.

What strikes me most is how you can’t make a movie like this any more. Never mind the costumes and so-very-’60s music, I’m talking about the plot and setup: the entire movie is so-very-’60s. Everything is set up, through perfect planning and careful legwork, so that the heist goes in the Brits’ favor. And while there are some surprises for them, it ends up with madcap chase sequences going in favor of Caine’s crew, the Italians stumbling around confusedly, crashing into walls, wrecking their cars, and so on.

There’s no sense that the robbers are in any kind of trouble; the Mafia thread purports to some trick ending, something related to Caine’s girlfriend, but that never appears; and up until the literal cliffhanger, there’s no sense that these guys aren’t going to make off with four million in gold bricks. Part of the problem is that a proposed sequel never appeared, but I was struck by how short the film was—making it shallow in both plot and character development, and its lack of emotion detracts from its attempts to build tension or drama.

Of course, that’s not why you’re watching this movie. You’re watching to see a well-coordinated planning sequence turn into Mini Coopers driving up, through, and over buildings—down into a subterranean mall, into a church, through a sewer system, on a roof, etc. And it’s a fine chase sequence, even if it’s pure Mini glorification, something that the remake latched onto to the point where it was the best two-hour ad for Minis ever made.

For some reason, this confused poster didn't entice American audiences.

And because of that well-executed heist—and chase—the film is deservedly a classic. It’s nice to see an old-fashioned heist go well for the heroes, and the chase scenes are entertaining for their madcap nature, blazing through every kind of location imaginable. But I guess the dark old film noir and gritter late ’60s/early ’70s flicks are more my cup of tea; while I liked The Italian Job as an enjoyable lighthearted romp, with good characterization and fantastic car chases, I thought it was too straightforward, with a feeble plot lacking in suspense or depth. To each their own.

Ten Great Things about The One Ring RPG

In lieu of a real review or anything, here’s ten of the best things I found about the new Middle Earth-based The One Ring.

1. Mirkwood! You want to know a brilliant idea? Start off your three-game Middle Earth RPG line in between The Hobbit and LOTR, in one of the most detailed areas of the world, where Bilbo was wandering around just five years prior. It’s a nice sandbox to play in, a good points-of-light old-school locale, with lots of potential for cool plots, without being in a high-traffic area where the noted NPCs will overshadow the players. And it hits all the basics, containing elves and dwarfs and orcs, ruins, mystery and adventure. For small-scale adventuring and the beginning of an epic RPG trilogy, it’s a good start.
   
2. Feels like Tolkien! The problem with the Middle Earth RPGs that came before is that they weren’t based around the actual themes Tolkien dealt with: long epic journeys, fellowship/the adventuring group as a unified whole, the fine sense of history and scale, lineage and the heroic adventures of prior heroes’ offspring, a high-fantasy realm with high-magic artifacts and creatures but with limited magic use. All of these are here as core game mechanics. Mission Accomplished.
3. No Wizards! Well, Radaghast is around as a deus ex machina NPC, but no playable wizards at any rate.
4. Corruption: Taint and Redemption! Speaking of major themes of Middle Earth translated to core mechanics. See anguish, take part in suffering, travel through tainted lands, and you gain corruption. How do you get rid of it? Make something beautiful ala Earthdawn: roll your Craft or Singing or whatnot to bolster your own spirits.
5. Dice Mechanics! When these were announced, the worry was that they’d be like Warhammer FRPG’s box of inane special bits. Instead, it’s quite simple. The One Ring uses a dice pool (ala Roll-and-Keep or Storyteller or Shadowrun) of d6′s, backed up by a Feat Die (ala the Wild Die of Star Wars d6 or Savage Worlds), in this case a d12. Rolling a 6 on the d6′s gives you a raise, e.g., makes your result that much better if you succeed; the dice pool results are summed, and go up against a base difficulty of 12-14. The d12 is closer to a d10, numbered 1 through 10 with two special sides: a Gandalf rune (auto-succeed) on the 12, and an Eye of Sauron (bad things happen) on the 1. Very slick, and you can use dice you already own. A full set is provided in the slipcase, I’d like to see separate sets for sale.
6. Encumbrance/Fatigue! One of the best systems in gaming for handling this, I kid you not. Running too much, wearing heavy armor, or otherwise exerting yourself in combat makes you Weary, which brings us to the other half of the dice mechanics: while Weary, results of 1, 2, and 3 on the d6′s aren’t counted. Ouch. But at least your high-end results, including the raises from rolling a 6 and the Gandalf rune on the d12, still count.
7. Beautiful maps! I’m partial to cartography, and this set’s strong selling point is the maps. There’s a nice player’s map of the Mirkwood region, along with a GM’s map, showcasing the major features, hex-grid distances, all color-coded to determine how long it takes to travel in one type of terrain or another.
8. The Art Loving Rules! It’s all very evocative of Tolkien’s Dark Ages Europe-esque world, in part because John Howe was tapped for this project. Though, it was Jon Hodgson’s work that made the book shine. All the art on this page is from the interior of the book: vast, mist-shrouded wilderness, like old-school landscapes, showing just how small and insignificantly finite our adventurers are in this ancient land.
9. Dynamic Character Creation! There’s only a half-dozen different faction-races—hobbits, dwarfs of the Misty Moutain, wood elves, Beornings, woodmen, and Bard’s riverfolk—but each has a variety of skill-sets to pick from and assign, various backgrounds, and occupation/callings, which results in a flexible system. Much more “who you are” than the D&D-esque “what you do,” which is nice, with plenty of freedom of choice. I’m hoping more will be added sooner than later, but the base ones cover a range of possibilities.
10. Synthesis of Form and Function! I know number two is similar, but I can’t get over this fact: it feels like The Hobbit. MERP always felt like Rolemaster wearing a Lord of the Rings mask, with its drudgery of charts, deadly criticals, and excessive list of skills. Decipher’s LOTR game was marred by typos, horrible handling of a cash-cow license, and a D&D-esque feeling of “descend into this dungeon, kill that, take its loot.” The One Ring is the first game that doesn’t feel like a variation on D&D, but gives an actual Middle Earth game vibe, in its handling of mechanics, narrative, and combat.

And a few things that aren’t so great, just so I’m not accused of favoritism. Every game I own has at least a few flaws, and this one is no exception.

1. Damn the Simulationist Nature! This is one of those games where skills like Singing and Cooking are actually important. I guess it’s nice that they have mechanical uses, and they do have a place in Tolkien’s books, but is this the kind of thing you really want to bother with in an RPG? Yes, rolling your Cooking makes sense—think of Samwise in the movies—but it reminds me of the ’80s, Rolemaster’s everything-and-its-cousin skill list and AD&D’s nonweapon proficiencies, which were the last places I saw Cooking listed as a skill. Ugh.
2. Lack of enemies! The only adversaries are those which appeared in the books, namely various kinds of orcs, trolls, wolves, spiders, and bats/vampires. That’s about it. Granted, plenty of variety in each type, so they’re perfect for scaling and changing it up, but there isn’t a whole lot of variety. I am glad they left the dragons and balrogs for more applicable supplements. But I foresee encounters becoming very repetitive.
3. Indexing is a bitch! Get used to switching back and forth between the Player’s book and the Loremaster’s book. I’m not exactly sure why they have this terminology, since important rules are spread out between them; other rules are mentioned once, and never referred to again. The worst parts are the rules that aren’t lumped with similar rules, and dumped someplace off the map—sometimes in another book. So it can be hard to find what you’re looking for if you didn’t memorize the books cover to cover.

Those are the only complaints I can drop on this, though, aside from a few niggling nitpicks that aren’t worth mentioning. Cubicle 7 has a GM—err, Loremaster Screen scheduled, along with Tales of the Wilderland, a seven-adventure loosely-linked adventure campaign. I think the game’s strength will be its scale of cumulative slipcase/box set games, allowing a group to run parallel adventures to the novels from the time of Smaug’s death to the fall of Sauron… provided the line has enough longevity and supplements.

[The One Ring] Initial Impressions

I picked up The One Ring a few months ago, back when I had some Amazon gift cards, and have been paging through it since; very impressed so far, so here are some initial impressions. Something I’ve been meaning to do for a while, but I’ve been busy fixing computers and stuff. Besides, not like I got a review copy or anything as posting incentive.

The One Ring, released this last October, is the latest attempt to make Middle Earth into a viable roleplaying game. You could ask whether or not we need another Middle Earth RPG, since we have I.C.E.’s MERP and Decipher’s Lord of the Rings, but unless you’re a huge fan of either of those you’ve probably already answered the question with a “yes.” MERP was a copy of Rolemaster with Middle Earth setting details slapped on; Decipher wasn’t terribly knowledgeable about roleplaying games, and their product line shows: the books were passably solid but not exemplary, and support for the line bottomed out sometime shortly after the Two Towers sourcebook was released. (It was also focused more on the movies than the books, which may or may not be a bad thing.)

Whether or not we need another high-fantasy elfs and goblins RPG is another question, Epic Pooh and China Mieville and all; I still like Tolkien’s (and pre-Tolkien) novels to the subsequent fantasy genre, and make an exception in my general dislike of traditional fantasy for a couple of reasons. (The big one being that Tolkien wrote a myth, the end-all of Northern European mythic cycles to be precise, while everyone since writes in the genre known as fantasy. Then again, I also love The Iliad and Norse fables and the like.) YMMV.

In any case, The One Ring, Cubicle 7′s newest RPG. (It goes well with Starblazer and Doctor Who; they should have some “Imported from Britain” sticker on there for their outsourcing of European nerddom to America.) It’s written by Italian Francesco Nepitello, who knows his Middle Earth better than most. And while it’s another of those dreaded indie storygame RPGs, the influence of traditional games is immense: I can see running it either as a high-end tactical trad game (with some homebrewing to the combat) just as well as a storygame.

So far I’m liking what I’m seeing. Unlike previous Middle Earth attempts, the game adheres strictly to Tolkien’s style and world, meaning there’s no playable wizards for one. It also tries to make game mechanics out of some of Tolkien’s themes. Travel, for one; the included maps are used to determine just how long it took to get from one adventure to another. Lineage for another; after a player’s hero is “retired,” they can continue their story using that hero’s offspring, which is pretty cool. And while there are no magic-users, artifacts do exist, much as Bilbo and the dwarfs stumbled into a cache of magic swords.

The setting is Mirkwood, the wild expanse of forest and lawless orc-infested land depicted in The Hobbit. Take your old-school D&D wilderlands/points-of-light setting and turn it to eleven; safeholds are few and far between, the going is treacherous, and various enemies lurk in every corner. Plenty of room to explore and adventure in, and the books are littered with interesting story-seeds and plot hook ideas.

The dice are an interesting feature and selling point; you get a number of d6s and a d12, which you roll in a dice pool of sixers (equal to skill rating) with the d12 as your wild/action die. Rolling a six on the d6s gives you the equivalent of a Raise, making the result that much better. The d12 is actually a d10 with two special sides: a Gandalf rune, acting as an auto-success, and an Eye of Sauron, which isn’t quite an instant failure, instead making the result interestingly bad.

So, you end up rolling a bunch of d6s (up to six) plus the d12 against a base difficulty of 14, which can be a stretch on 3d6. Skills are divided under three attributes; you can add the related attribute’s total to the dice-roll total by spending a Heart point—something like a cross between Willpower and FATE points—if you don’t think you rolled high enough. (Otherwise, attributes don’t do that much.)

Combat is very streamlined, and though it’s not as tactical as it could be, it’s meaty in its own right. It revolves around the abstract of choosing a combat stance, which modifies physical aggressiveness and placement. So, not tactical in the maps-and-minis way, but a fine balance of choosing your balance of offense/defense. It’s also worth noting the game’s amazing encumbrance system: exhaust yourself, carry too much heavy weapons/armor, and suddenly you’ll find yourself Weary. When Weary, rolling any 1′s, 2′s, and 3′s on the d6s aren’t counted in your total. Dayum.

If you'd rather not suffer from eyestrain, you can download the sheet from the Cube 7 website.

Character creation is simple, yet flexible. You choose from one of six races—hobbits, dwarfs of the Misty Mountains, wood elves, wildermen, Beornings, and Bard’s riverfolk—and then pick your background (which provides skills and abilities), some more skills, some favored skills (and favored attributes, which raise the bonus provided when you spend that Heart point to boost favored skills), and lastly, pick from one of five callings—slayer, treasure hunter, scholar, wanderer, or warden. Which also provide you with benefits and new options.

It may sound limiting as a class system, but trust me, it’s not; there’s a lot you can build from all the options, and it gives a great feel of “who you are” rather than the D&D-style class feel of “what you can do.” That said, I’m hoping for a companion or something that adds in more races, backgrounds, and callings.

The One Ring comes in a slipcase for $59.99 (cheaper on Amazon!), containing two softcover rulebooks totalling 336 pages, two 22″ x 17″ mini-poster maps, and a tray of dice—six special d6s and a special d12. It’s a tad on the expensive side, softcovers and all, but it looks loving beautiful, and I’d say it’s totally worth the price I paid… which was negligible thanks to my Amazon gift certs and the fact they only charge $37 for it.) If you’re a Middle Earth fan, and don’t mind looking outside the D&D box… give it a shot. It’s the most Tolkienesque Middle Earth RPG so far.

Horror Movie Review – Burn, Witch, Burn! (Night of the Eagle)

Since I managed to get ahead of myself on the 15 Days of Horror thing, time to do something different. Since I just read Fritz Leiber’s novel Conjure Wife, I thought I’d do a tie-in between blogs and popped on Netflix to see which of the three movies based on the book were on streaming. The answer would be 1962′s Burn, Witch, Burn!, released as Night of the Eagle in its native land of England.

A quick rundown if you’re too lazy to read a review of the novel: Norman Taylor (Peter Wyngarde) is a psychology professor at a small England college who lectures on beliefs and the supernatural right before he discovers his wife Tansy (Janet Blair) is a practicing witch. Being a man fueled by logic and reason, he has her burn all of her charms and occult paraphernalia. Wrong move; it turns out she was practicing white witchcraft to aid her husband’s career, and now the disbelieving Norman finds his once easy life is now fraught with peril (and large stone eagles).

There are a number of changes between the book and film, but most of them are marginal. Hempnell College was in New England in the book; because of its location the film dropped replaced the “New” with “Jolly Old.” Tansy no longer has her own dressing room to store her witch stuff in; instead, she keeps them in the drawer above where Norman keeps his pyjamas (British spelling, wot wot!). The stone dragon was replaced with a stone eagle, hence the schlocky original title, and comes complete with a transformation and Hilarious Superimposed Normal Hawk Footage (you can see the strings!). That’s pretty much it; the film is very accurate to its source material.

The biggest changes were with the characters. In the book, Norman was kind of a dick to his colleagues, considering himself better than them, but a loving husband devoted to Tansy; in the film, he’s a dick to everyone. In the book, you get a strong sense that Tansy is calm, collected, and working her butt off to save Norman even though she’s renounced witchcraft (see: the storm scene with the dragon); in the same scene in the film, along with most of her scenes, Tansy is an overemotional neurotic who spends a lot of time screaming. There’s also a bad run of trite dialogue early in the film, but other than that (and the screaming), the acting was fine.

I think the book was much better for handling suspense and tension, though the movie still gave its all. The film is pure budget British (or, British budget) from the early ’60s, so don’t expect a lot, even though Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont were the screenwriters. I think it’s a passable film, not a great movie or lost classic, but it covered the plot of the book without compromising.

As for whether it was scary or not… I’m not the best judge of that, having went into the movie knowing what was going to happen. The film follows the same pattern of strange events to build tension, but it does have some twists that made things interesting—most of them occurring near the end. I thought it was solid, if not outstanding.

15 Days of Horror – Shaun of the Dead

I think it says a lot about me when the first fifteen horror movies I can come up with include a lot of hybrids—a couple of thriller crime/horror hybrids, a bunch of SF/horror hybrids, and a pair of comedy/horror hybrids. Like this one.

“You’ve got red on you.”

Shaun of the Dead isn’t a true horror movie; it’s a romantic comedy, but one that stays within the constraints of a zombie movie. Simon Pegg is an office zombie, going through his day to day life, hanging out with his slacker friend (Nick Frost) and trying to win back his girlfriend (Kate Ashfield), which just so happens to occur during a zombie apocalypse. That’s where a lot of the humor comes from: Pegg’s Shaun doesn’t even notice the zombies at first, too caught up in his thoughts.

The fact that it’s also a checklist for zombie film components is also a plus: escape scenes, gruesome walking dead, the slow and eventual deaths of the less-important group members, one group member getting bit, the climactic hold-0ut scene… it’s all there. Only neatly subverted into comedy: instead of holding out in an office building or mall, they hold out in a pub; the person who’s infected by the zombies is Shaun’s girlfriend’s mother; the escape scene involves the survivors zombie-walking through a group of undead.

Why is it scary?

It’s not; not in the slightest bit. It is, however, pretty funny, and the zombie special effects are terrific. As a horror rom-com hybrid, I think it does what it set out to do damn well: be a comedy movie set within the boundaries of a zombie film. All the classic zombie film bits are there, making it an authentic zombie film, which it uses to its advantage: the movie takes a serious-but-comedic approach to panning the genre.

I think it holds up a lot better than the other serious zombie comedy (zom-com?), Zombieland, which had a lot going for it but was too short and too shallow and was largely powered by hype. Shaun came out of left field—being British helped, nobody in the States pays any attention to foreign films being developed, which is a shame—and I think being a pleasant surprise, with its distinctly British wry humor, made the film stick out in my mind.

At the end of the day, it may not be a real horror film, but it is one of the best zombie movies ever made.