Was that the sword of Conan?

I've been a fan of Conan the Barbarian since childhood - I loved the stories, the comics and the feature films with Arnold Schwarzenegger, pretty much everything.

So imagine how tickled pink I was last night when I sat down with family and friends to see the new Schwarzenegger film The Last Stand when the Barbarian's sword suddenly showed up.

The movie is a modern day action film wherein a sheriff named Ray Owens (Schwarzenegger) must stop a terrifying criminal from escaping the US through his small Arizona town.

The film is a pretty fun action-fest, lots of over the wall explosions, gunfights, etc., but there comes a moment where the team is loading up with weapons to protect their town and one of the sheriff's deputies, Figgy (played by Luis Guzman) picks up a pretty familiar sword... (pictured right).

The original creator of Conan, Robert E. Howard wrote an essay during the 1930's called The Hyborian Age in which he places the world of Conan the Barbarian into our own history.

So I'm just saying - that could be a pretty old sword...

Conan sequel?

Genre Character of the Week: Willow Ufgood

 So back in 1988 I was twelve-years-old and my mother took my three sisters and me down to Edmonton’s historic Princess Theatre (pictured left) to see the new movie, Willow. The four of us stood in a pretty long lineup for about half an hour waiting to buy our tickets, and then the manager comes out and starts counting people in the line.

The show was almost sold out and we were either going to just make the cut or have to come back and see the movie another day. Luckily for us, we made it, although we ended up sitting scattered throughout the two floors of the theatre, and I ended up in the very front row, head craned back and nervous about the group of older girls I had to sit beside to see the film.

The next two hours of my life then proceeded to fly by, as I saw my first really great live-action fantasy film. Now I know, Star Wars and E.T. can both be fit clearly into the fantasy genre, depending on your point of view, and the early 80’s had a lot of great Fantasy classics like Ladyhawke, Time Bandits, Conan the Barbarian, Legend, and Excalibur, not to mention one of my favourite films period, The Princess Bride. But the thing is, I saw all of those on home video, rather than in an actual movie theatre – so for me Willow rightly takes its place as my first Fantasy film experience in a movie theatre.

For those of you who don’t know, the film follows this little guy, Willow Ufgood, a member of a race of little people called Nelwins, as he becomes the protector of a baby, and ends up having to save the world. For many people the movie is a sort of forgettable, pre-Lord of the Rings fantasy film also filmed in New Zealand and that’s about it.

For me, however, the story of this young husband and father going on a grand adventure and learning to trust in himself and his abilities totally resonated with me.

I’ll be quite honest here, I’m a pretty huge fan of the film – I read the novelization by Wayland Drew and played both the NES game and the Arcade version when I could. Although not a fan of the sequel series of novels, I think I may be one of the bigger fans of this film in my hometown, or at least in my neighborhood.

The film has recently been released on Blu-Ray, and if you haven’t check it out yet, it is definitely worth a look.

Genre Character of the Week: Corin

Last weekend I watched the newest version of Conan the Barbarian, and although I'm still definitely a classic Conan fan, I was happy to find my next genre character of the week, Conan's father; Corin.

Played by one of my favourite actors, Ron Perlman, who I've loved in everything from Hellboy to Cronos and am currently in awe of in Sons of Anarchy, Corin is a small role, but basically gives the audience the understanding of where Conan comes from. Personally, I found the newer film to be a little lacking in story and character arc as compared to the original but I will say that the early scenes with Corin were some of my favourites. Living in a brutal world, Corin does his best to be fair to all members of his tribe as well as show his son his love. Honestly, it was better than I was expecting from the film.

Although I wouldn't necessarily own the movie, I would definitely recommend it for a fun afternoon (and also my teenaged daughters were quite fond of Jason Momoa (the actor playing Conan), but I'm not really sure if it was for his acting.

Things I’ve Noticed: The 2011 Remakes are tempting me

When it comes to genre films, reboots come with the territory. In fact, one of my favourite horror films The Thing (1982) was a remake of a 1951 movie, The Thing From Another World. This year there are not one or two, but five remakes I'm looking forward to seeing in theatres.

There are four in August; Conan The Barbarian, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, Fright Night, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes and then in October a prequel for The Thing. Personally I'm a pretty big fan of the originals of all of these (except for Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, which I've never seen but my BFF Mike has at least twice) so on paper the idea of remaking two films from the '70s and three films from the '80s seems a little stranger to me.

Personally I've always been a purist on classic versions of films (I'll go much deeper into this in my upcomming string of October posts - The Reimaging of Bookmonkery), so it would take a pretty big reason for me to even be considering checking these films out in theatres.

Here's why I'm probably going to check these movies out anyway:

Conan The Barbarian) I am really a huge fan of all things Conan (little known secret, my father's first choice for my name was Conan) so even though I was severely disappointed in the director's previous film Friday The Thirteenth (Which will become a post of its own in October), I honestly will have to check out the newest interpretation of my favourite barbarian.

Don't be Afraid of the Dark) is co-written by Guillermo Del Toro, author of The Strain series and director of any number of movies I love.

Fright Night) David Tennant is going to co-star, and darn it I loved him in Doctor Who.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes) looks really, really cool. Also after seeing pretty much every film starring James Franco from Freaks and Geeks forward, I'm interested to see how he does in a Science Fiction film.

The Thing) Honstly, when it comes to The Thing, it was already a remake, so a prequel is just continuing in the tradition of the 1982 film, and who am I to argue with tradition?

Things I've Noticed #6: 80% of Fantasy series are pointless

Growing up in the Prairie Provinces of Canada with bad asthma and where winter lasts more than half the year, I spent a lot of time indoors. While the other kids were skiing, skating, and having snowball fights, I spent most of my time doing a lot of reading, and although Horror and SF where my favourites growing up fantasy series definitely had a special place with me.

Both of my parents loved fantasy books, so you could say I have the love of Fantasy in my blood (True fact - my Dad originally

wanted to name me Conan - the fact that I ended up with at a career in libraries would have ended me). The Lord of the Rings, Dragonlance, and The Xanth Series were huge favourites of mine, and when I say huge I mean those three series alone took up most of my bookshelves.

Now, just to clarify my complaining, I am not talking about episodic series, where the main characters go on different adventures (Farfhd and the Gray Mouser or Conan the Barbarian). I like these books and many of them are still favourites of mine.

The Fantasy series I really have a problem with are the "Quest" series, which basically cut and paste from other, better books. This quest fiction, wherein some evil takes over a world, and a band of plucky youths my travel the land collecting parts of a fantastic treasure to ultimately defeat the villain is repetitive and pointless (The Sword of Shanara is a complete rip-off of The Lord of the Rings - I liked the rest of the series, but that first book shamelessly steals from Tolkein). Author Neil Gaiman actually calls this cut-and-paste process "plot coupons" and explains it very nicely here.

I think that unless the author actually has a story that MUST be told in more than 10 sequels they should go out and try something new. Heck, I would even be happy if they told other stories in their own world - I'm a huge Terry Pratchett fan, but if you break down his Discworld series into books about each character, the numbers are actually pretty conservative.

In the end, the best fantasy stories can still use the standard plots, but they do it from a new angle, or bend the rules to dazzle the readers (Fables, by Bill Willingham is a wonderful example). As of late my favourite Fantasy books are definitely stand alone ones (Neverwhere), or series that seem to be going somewhere - but in their own unique way (Percy Jackson and the Olympians).