Cassian Andor

From an article at THR by Etan Vlessing

Gareth Edwards’ The Creator, starring John David Washington and Gemma Chan in a sci-fi epic about a world at war with artificial intelligence, is set to open the Beyond Fest in Los Angeles.

The action thriller from 20th Century studios also stars Allison Janney and newcomer Madeleine Voyles and will screen at the Aero Theatre. The closing night film is Kristoffer Borgli’s comedy satire Dream Scenario from A24 and starring Nicolas Cage.

James Cameron, Michael Mann and Guillermo del Toro are set to headline L.A.'s biggest genre film festival with retrospective classic movie screenings. James Cameron will be at L.A.’s biggest genre festival for a special screening of The Abyss from 1989, Michael Mann will host a screening of his 1986 film Manhunter and actor Malcolm McDowell will be on hand for a special screening of Caligula: The Ultimate Cut.

Elsewhere, Joe Dante will host a screening of his 1978 thriller Piranha, Roger Corman will be in attendance for a special screening of The Raven from 1963 and Guillermo del Toro will present in-person his 2013 tentpole Pacific Rim.

Beyond Fest’s 11th edition will also give a world premiere to It’s a Wonderful Knife, introduced by director Tyler MacIntyre, as the festival is set to run from Sept. 26 to Oct. 10. Other titles this year include two starring Paul Mescal, Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers and Garth Davis’ psychological drama Foe; Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall; and Kitty Green’s outback thriller The Royal Hotel.

“With over 19,000 attendees in 2022, our goal this year was to go bigger while also exposing audiences to new filmmakers who represent the future,” Beyond Fest head of programming Evrim Ersoy said in a statement

Announcement link: https://old.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/16iqr80/hi_im_gareth_edwards_director_of_rogue_one_and/

Looks like it'll be on /r/movies at 19:00 UTC

From dicebreaker.com

With the recent release of Andor, the newest television series slicing a vertical piece out of the Star Wars universe, fans are witnessing the origins of one of the Rebel Alliance’s unsung hero. He begins as a cynic and a who’d rather toe the line to stay out of trouble, and the series will explore how the scales fell from his eyes and led him to join the cause.

It’s the sort of backstory that comprise tasty tabletop RPG characters, and indie designer Jess Levine would agree - her new title going rogue 2e uses the Star Wars story, along with the Rogue One film from 2016 as the foundation for spinning yarns about heroes forged from the stuff of common folks.

Just released, this second versions updates an expansion originally meant for Riley Rethal’s galactic 2e. That game is now its own 32-page book that can be used on its own for a group of two to five players eager to wage anti-fascist war against and pay the ultimate price for what they believe is right.

If you recall Dicebreaker’s coverage of Rethal’s own dip into the Star Wars inspiration bucket, the game adopts the Belonging Outside Belonging system created by Avery Alder and Benjamin Rosenbaum. That means no dice and no facilitators (GMs, DMs, etc.) are needed - just a group of friends and several tokens to act as fuel for drama and storytelling.

The playbooks in going rogue 2e all draw from the main cast of Rogue One: The Spy, The Leveraged, The Knight Errant, The Convert and The Loyal can be traced fairly directly onto the characters of Cassian Andor, Jyn Erso, the pairing of Baze Malbus and Chirrut Imwe, Bodhi Rook and K-2SO, respectively. A special pseudo-playbook entitled The Bond personifies the link between The Loyal and one other player in the group, which will be a boon but also an obligation to uphold.

Each has their own moves to use during play that stretch across three categories and interact with the token system in specific ways. Strong moves require spending a token, lateral moves allow players to give a token to someone else, and vulnerable moves grant that player a token. The story plays out in scenes as characters narrate what happens, calling on moves when appropriate and using their tokens to shift the story in a direction that suits their characters motivations, fears and agendas. The token economy forces players to interact in different ways to afford moves that can upset the status quo in their favour - whether they achieve this through teamwork or manipulation can only be discovered during play.

Levine’s own twist comes from the addition of a clock mechanical called Fates. The typical example used in promotional material describes The Sacrifice, a countdown to the ultimate fate for all characters. The boxes are filled as the collaborative story reaches certain thresholds, granting everyone involved access to some choice moves that ultimately end in narrating their pivotal final moments. Are they able to transfer the Death Star plans before the base explodes? Do they hold off the enemy’s advance long enough to collapse the bridge? Do they have any poignant final words?

Different elements of the setting also have their own moves that players can embody and exert. Both sides of this galactic-wide war are not inert powers, and the characters will need to navigate political obstacles, operational security and probably more than one security checkpoint to win the day.

Rogue One’s story of resistance against rising fascism found quite an audience in 2016’s North America, and it's no surprise its premise is still inspiring creators a few years later. Direct and radical action might not be as de rigueur these days, but it can still inspire us to search for the spark of something similar within ourselves. Plus, the heroic but anonymous sacrifice is prime dramatic fodder any day of the week.

More information about going rogue 2e can be found on the game’s Itch.io’s page. Anyone looking for more Star Wars-inspired tabletop content will be happy to know Levine is also the author behind the excellent I Have the High Ground, which explodes the dramatic exchange of words before the duel between Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi into a deadly game of back-and-forth posturing that ends the moment someone draws steel.

If you have a spare 5 hours, you can listen to the "A More Civilised Age" podcast hosts have a play-through

From: https://www.thewrap.com/the-creator-beirut-explosion-footage/

“The Creator,” the new sci-fi film from New Regency and Disney’s 20th Century Studios directed by “Rogue One” filmmaker Gareth Edwards, blurs the line between reality and fantasy by including footage from the 2020 Beirut explosion in its tale of A.I. waging war on humanity.

Footage from the 2020 Beirut explosion, which happened at the Port of Beirut in Lebanon and led to 218 deaths and $15 billion worth of property damage, appears in the trailer for the film. It was first noticed by an eagle-eyed Reddit user on July 17. It was further elevated when popular YouTube channel Corridor Crew brought up the situation on their “VFX Artists React” series.

Like most big-budget effects movies, “The Creator” employed several vendors to bring its otherworldly landscape to life including Folks VFX, Industrial Light & Magic, MARZ, Misc Studios, Fin Design + Effects, Supreme Studio, Outpost VFX, Crafty Apes, Jellyfish Pictures, VFX Los Angeles, Frontier VFX, Outpost VFX and Clear Angle Studios.

It’s unclear which vendor worked on the controversial shot in question, and who made the decision to include the real-life footage in “The Creator.”

Video: The Creator vs. Beirut Explosion

Disney did not respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.

“The Creator,” previously known as “True Love” and set for theatrical release on Sept. 29, comes from Edwards, who directed 2014’s “Godzilla” and the micro-budgeted “Monsters” before “Rogue One.” The film, written by Edwards and Chris Weitz, is based on an original idea that envisions a future where man and machine are locked in bitter combat.

John David Washington plays a human freedom fighter who is sent to destroy a source of ultimate power for the robots. Gemma Chan, Ken Watanabe, Allison Janney, Ralph Ineson and Sturgill Simpson (in a role originally meant for his “Righteous Gemstones” co-star Danny McBride) are among the supporting players.

Special screenings set at IMAX theaters in major U.S. cities of exclusive first-look footage from the upcoming sci-fi thriller, followed by a live Q&A with the director/producer/co-writer; film hits theaters next month.

Gareth Edwards (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Godzilla) will lead an interactive live Q&A following a special screening of The Creator: IMAX Live Exclusive First Look on Tuesday, August 29 at 5:00 pm PT/8:00 pm ET, at selected U.S. theaters. Edwards’ new film, The Creator, which he directed, produced, and co-wrote, opens in theaters September 29.
The sneak peek fan event takes place at the AMC Century City IMAX Theatre and features exclusive footage from the upcoming sci-fi action thriller and an in-person Q&A with Edwards, which will be shown at the other theaters.

The screening event is at 10 participating IMAX theatres in Los Angeles; New York; Atlanta; Boston; Chicago; Dallas; Toronto; Seattle; Washington D.C.; and San Francisco. All attendees receive a commemorative lanyard and mini poster from the film.

Tickets for the sneak peek are available on a first-come, first-served basis: here

The sci-fi action thriller set amidst a future war between the human race and the forces of artificial intelligence, The Creator stars John David Washington; Gemma Chan; Ken Watanabe; Sturgill Simpson; Madeleine Yuna Voyles; and Allison Janney.

From 20th Century Studios, the film is directed by Edwards, with a screenplay by Edwards and Chris Weitz from a story by Edwards. Edwards, p.g.a., Kiri Hart, Jim Spencer, p.g.a., and Arnon Milchan serve as producers, and Yariv Milchan; Michael Schaefer; Natalie Lehmann; Nick Meyer; and Zev Foreman are executive producers.

VFX Studios include Atomic Arts (VFX Supervisor: David Simpson); Crafty Apes (VFX Supervisor: Nicholas Daniels); Fin Design + Effects (VFX Supervisor: Stuart White); FOLKS (VFX Supervisor: Phil Prates); ILM (VFX Supervisors: Jay Cooper); Jellyfish Pictures (VFX Supervisor: Simon Kilroe); MARZ (VFX Supervisor: Justin Bunt); MISC Studios (VFX Supervisor: Edward Hawkins); Outpost VFX (VFX Supervisor: Joseph DiValerio); Territory Studio (VFX Supervisor: Luca Zappala); and VFX Los Angeles, Inc. (VFX Supervisor: Charles H. Joslain).

(Not sure about that poster though - Washington's character looks a bit strange)

Yoinked from Tansy Gardam (from the "Going Rogue" podcast)

Just watched The Last Castle, a Robert Redford/James Gandolfini movie from 2001 and thought it interesting to compare the similarities and differences.

Both feature older guys who are natural leaders, but are determined to just see their sentence out, until they realise how rotten the system is. The inciting incident is the death of an inmate, with the prison doc unable to do anything due to a lack of supplies. Both feature a charged assault on guards who are picking them off from an elevated vantage point, until they eventually overcome them with improvised missiles. Both end a little ambiguously regarding the fate of the leader, who - it turns out - was mostly doing it for his fellow inmates.

Obviously there's plenty of differences, and many of the similarities are just tropes of the genre. The big difference, I thought, is that there's no Gandolfini character on Narkina 5 - no tyrannical warden making everyone's life a misery. The sadistic-seeming dude who welcomes Cassian isn't seen much of again, and when they finally reach the top, it's just some guy (who I like to imagine died his hair grey to try to look older).

Cast

Andy Serkis
Diego Luna and Duncan Pow
Fiona Shaw
Kyle Soller and Adria Arjona

Directors

Ben Carron
Toby Haynes

Editor

John Gilroy

Show runner

Tony Gilroy
Tony Gilroy (post finale)

Interviews are from The Playlist Podcast (with all the cruft edited out)

The only problem - for mash-up artists as well for Tony Gilroy - is how many characters in Andor there are!

I can see how it uses many of the same tricks as Monsters (2010) to keep costs down - using TV and phone footage, shooting like a documentary - but is this really the film I've heard good things about?

Some UK-filmed shows (like House of the Dragon and Industry) are keeping going through the SAG-AFTRA strike, because most of their cast aren't SAG members, and they were able to film scenes with American actors up-front.

I'm assuming actors like Diego Luna, Kyle Soller and Forest Whittaker are SAG members, but I don't think they would have been able to use the same tactic, because of the way they film in 3-episode blocks (with different directors), and how much their characters are interwoven with everyone else.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1353550

After the fall of the Galactic Empire, former Jedi Knight Ahsoka Tano investigates an emerging threat to a vulnerable galaxy.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13622776/

TLDR: Fluff.