Sebastian P. Breit's Blog, page 20

Rome, Sweet Rome

from Variety.com:

Warner Bros. has preemptively purchased the high-concept pitch "Rome, Sweet Rome" from first-time scribe James Erwin, an author and two-time "Jeopardy!" champion from Des Moines, Iowa.

Erwin's pitch sale came about as a result of several postings on the website Reddit.com, an online community and social news aggregator where users vote to determine which posts land on the site's home page.

Erwin set out to answer the question: "What if a unit of current U.S. Marines are suddenly transported back to ancient Rome and forced to do battle with the Roman legions?" Pic will follow the Marines as they're flung into the past where they encounter one of the world's most legendary villains and disrupt history. To return home, they have to set history back on the track they altered.

Madhouse Entertainment's Adam Kolbrenner spotted Erwin's "Rome, Sweet Rome" posts once they reached the top of Reddit and moved quickly to contact the writer and begin working with him to develop the concept. When it came time to find a home for the project, Kolbrenner brought it to WB's Chris Gary, a young exec who encouraged the studio to move aggressively to acquire it.

Kolbrenner will produce with Gianni Nunnari ("Immortals") of Hollywood Gang, where John Ridley will oversee the project for the company. Madhouse's Robyn Meisinger will exec produce and Gary will shepherd the project for Warners.

Erwin's next book, due in 2012, chronicles the history of U.S. military actions. He's repped by Madhouse Entertainment and attorney Bruce Gellman.

Sounds like something the Syfy-Channel would usually produce on a a shoestring budget (though there it'd indubitably involve dinosaurs...). Three words from me: SOUNDS INCREDIBLY STUPID.

Project Arbiter

From their website:

Created by a group of passionate and innovative filmmakers and shot on the RED One camera system, Project Arbiter is a 20-minute sci-fi espionage short film that demonstrates how a small quiet victory tips the balance of power and foretells the outcome of World War II.

Set in 1943, the height of WWII, this is a story about an experimental O.S.S. unit code named Project Arbiter. Thousands of feet above Northern Europe a small plane carries a skeleton crew of the Allies best, including Special Fields Op. Captain Joseph Colburn. His handler, Major Thomas Hardy does a final review of the mission's grim intel: infiltrate a mysterious villa on the Polish border and uncover its secrets. Colburn emerges donning a prototype suit, which can temporarily render its occupant invisible. As the plane's bay doors howl open Colburn begins to put on the skull-faced helmet when the plane is rocked by an anti-aircraft shell. Rapidly losing air pressure and altitude, now there's no question... this is a one-way mission.
Trailer
I'm kinda torn on this. Oh, I am going to watch and most likely even enjoy it. But while I'm a big fan of well-made indie productions, even more so ones that go a bit into the WW2/Supernatural genre, there's just some things that don't sit right with me (and by that I don't mean that it's obviously not been shot in Poland, or Europe in general). Maybe it's because of what I've been reading lately, maybe I'm just in a grumpy and/or pedantic mood, but: am I the only one a bit bored by the "Lonely US Hero fighting off scores of baddies in WW2 with super gear"?

Well, after a decade worth of WW2 shooters, maybe it's just oversaturation with the theme...?

Guys, you outnumbered the Axis in something like 8 out of 10 battles you fought against them, often coupled with something approaching air supremacy, and you outproduced them almost right from the start. I'm not being offensive here just for the hell of it, but: the story of the small group with superior weapons and esprit de corps fighting against enemies in WW2, against the odds? Technically, that'd be the Wehrmacht...

Dreading the day...

...this will be released.
teamworx, the people behind such...ahem, "pearls" like the 2-parter Dresden, which I took my sweet time eviscerating in writing and as a video, have just started filming a new piece of what I'd like to call "historytainment for the simple-minded".

This time the object of their attention is Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox. The picture below was part of the initial press release, showing veteran actor Ulrich Tukur as the famous officer. [image error] Ulrich Tukur (left) as Field Marshall Erwin Rommel. This
picture will most likely be the best thing about the whole
project.
Going by teamworx' record so far, I have the dire feeling that this picture will be the best thing about the whole venture. If Dresden or Die Flucht (The Escape, a 2-parter about the mass exodus from East Prussia when the Red Army invaded) are indicative of what we can expect, we will get love triangles, moralistic preaching, probably Rommel or someone else on his staff being hardcore hidden democrats, some Waffen-SS or Gestapo guys being stereotypically evil just for the hell of it, and a big, wagging index finger telling us (the initial German audience) how bad we were (even though the people who were barely recruits back then are already dying out). Tukur's presence is the only thing that gives me some slight hopes that this project might turn out decent.

I will still watch it - I am feeling professionally obliged to do so - but really, I have few if any hopes about this being any good when it will be released next year. Bah, couldn't they have left Rommel alone?

Review - The Afrika Reich

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Review - The Afrika Reich

Reading The Afrika Reich is a abit like watching a movie made from elements of James Bond, Schindler's List, and Die Hard.
A shady businessman hires a crack team of mercenaries to assassinate the Governor General of the German Africa territories, Walter E. Hochburg, and their leader Burton has a personal score to settle with the man. They aparently succeed in killing their targetm but from there on everything goes wrong for the group, and one by one the members of the group are hunted down until only the old comrades Whaler and Burton remain, both veterans of the Foreign Legion. And now they have to slip out of thousands of squaremiles of SS-controlled Africa...
The Afrika Reich presents the reader with a steady stream of action in an alien and yet familiar world of a 1950s Africa where the Black population has almost completely vanished, shipped off to the so-called Muspel zone in the Sahara. The enemy is evil, over the top evil in a mustache-twirling way befitting of that fine best spy of Her Majesty's secret service. In the same way, he truly is as gutwrenchingly, unflinchingly evil as he is in the character of Amon Goeth in Schindler's List. Walter E. Hochburg is Saville's Goeth. Nearly everything screams of psychotic megalomania.
The Germans themselves – except for Field Marshal von Arnim – are all ugly or brutish, and going by Saville's description, all the people in The Afrika Reich seem to eat are sausages, sauerkraut and strudel, the "holy trinity of German cuisines". Considering the immense variety of German foods (and the actually limited number of dishes I know that contain either sausages or sauerkraut), that's like saying British cuisine consists of plum pudding and fish'n'chips.
And then there's the Die Hard aspect: that of the hero(es) who, no matter the pain and injury inflicted, can get out of his cuffs and into the fight again, for what feels like a dozen times throughout the book.
Which is one or two times to many, in my opinion. During the beginning of last third, the book drags considerably. Here, Saville could have cut 50 pages with no great loss to the integrity of the central plot itself, or better, used them to expand on the revelations of that very last part.
The alternate history aspect is well-employed, taken as a matter of fact of how the world works. I feel this worked to the novel's advantage; delving deeper into the coming about of such backgrounds only opens the gates wide for doubts (like: where's the manpower just to control things there coming from).
Some of the more cartoonish aspects of The Afrika Reich can be put down to an extrapolation of Himmler's schemes and the relative independence of Hochburg's Africa, but on the whole one gets the impression that there's really no reason why any sane German or European would want to live in The Afrika Reich, not with the pervasive presence of jackbooting thugs liable to ruin your day just because they think they can.
Final Verdict: 3.5-4/5. All in all, The Afrika Reich is an entertaining first novel, both for Saville and for his planned trilogy. It doesn't question its setup and rolls with the flow, presenting the reader with non-stop action of heroes possessing over-the-top endurance, and with villains that'd put Blofeld to shame.[image error]

The War Review, Episode 4: My Top 11 - and an Announcement

Here's the link to the full episode.

Doomsday 1983 Contest

Mitro over at the Alternate History Weekly Update has a contest up and running, and I'm a bit ashamed to only now get around to get the word out about it.

Last Thursday, I wrote a showcase on 1983: Doomsday.  Korsgaard wisely pointed out that I should have posted it on September 26th, to celebrate the day where one sane man saved us all.  After berating myself for my lack of vision, I came up with a new idea!

I present to you "The Oral History of Doomsday" Contest.  For those who remember my tensure as admin on Alternate History Online, this will be a writing contest open to everyone.  All submissions must be in the form of interviews with someone alive today in the 1983: Doomsday universe who also survived Doomsday itself.

All questions and submissions may be submitted to ahwupdate@gmail.com.  All submissions must be sent to that email email address before September 26, 2011.  Depending on the number of entries, I will either post the one I think was the best on September 26 or I will post the top entries over that week and allow the readers to vote for the best one.

Good luck!

I originally intended to take part, writing an interview with my fictional self in that universe, but there's just no way I would have survived a 1983 Doomsday scenario. Why? Well, take a look at this picture. It's all 20 kilometers around where I lived back then, and all the pink circles are valid strategic targets... [image error] Yeah, I'd have been fucked.

Let's Play: Hearts of Iron Doomsday Armageddon: Italy 5

Part 5, in which I annex a state defended by sheep and hookers and fight my way across Yugoslavia.

Part 4 of the Let's Play as Italy, in which the Japanese ...

Part 4 of the Let's Play as Italy, in which the Japanese rip the Chinese a new one.

Let's Play: Hearts of Iron Doomsday Armageddon: Italy 3

Part 3 of my Let's Play as Italy.

Militia Divisions are good for nothing, the Spanish Fascists are way faster than I am, and my next target will be the superpower of... Albania.

3. The Winter War - A Finnish Masterpiece

Watch the full review on my Blip.tv channel here.