Hollywood has a nasty little tendency to take awesome video games, and translate them into extremely poor film adaptations. I could sit here and list the bombs, like Hitman, Tomb Raider, MARIO, yadda yadda yadda. Well, before any Hollywood big whigs could taint the very name of Half Life, the Purchase Brothers, two independant film directors from Toronto, took it upon themselves to create their own original film adaptation of the game. In true Valve style, they chose to follow alternate characters, as opposed to the Silent Man himself (ala Blue Shift and Opposing Forces). The film, titled Escape From City 17 utilizes a wonderful guerilla style of filming that adds a much more "there" feeling to the movie, without causing motion sickness (not that I suffer from that anyway, I loved Blair Witch, but I digress). The CG is very impressive for something independant and in my opinion sets the bar pretty high for that Hollywood $100 million budget. The difference? The first two episodes only had a $500 budget. It's being billed as a mini-series, so whether there will be more than the two episodes is still unknown. You can view the first episode of the film by CLICKING HERE - be sure to watch it in HD, or else you'll miss the awesome.

2/13/2009 09:06:00 PM
Categories: Author: Slimee