Angels and dust on the set of the supernatural Legion

Friday, August 21, 2009

Angels and dust on the set of the supernatural Legion

SCI FI Wire took a trip to the New Mexico about a year ago to the set of Legion, the upcoming supernatural thriller about God's having enough of the 6 billion ape descendants roaming this planet and sending, ... well, ... legions of angels to wipe us out.

BAFTA-nominated actor Paul Bettany plays the Archangel Michael, who decides to go AWOL (that's Angel Without Leave) against God's orders and defend humanity from the seraphic onslaught. Other cast members include G.I. Joe's Dennis Quaid, Transformers' Tyrese Gibson, Friday Night Lights' Adrianne Palicki and genre fave Doug Jones. Visual-effects expert Scott Stewart makes his feature directing debut with Legion, after years of heading up effects house The Orphanage.

"My objective in this film is to save the human race," says Bettany in his trailer, addressing how one goes about playing an archangel. He's covered with tattoos crafted by the makeup department in the Enochian language of angels devised by the 16th-century necromancer John Dee. "Which is impossible to play [as an actor], so you have to come up with substitutes. I have two children and a wife who I'm, you know, quite fond of," he says with profoundly British understatement. "I simply wouldn't want anything awful to happen to them. So I mix my fascination with the mythology of angels with my real-life objective to keep my children safe, to keep them as happy as possible, ... with the attitude of a warrior. One can only deal with one's fantasies of what an angel is. I began to sort of ... create something a little more concrete."If T.S. Eliot said he could show you "fear in a handful of dust," then the makers of Legion seem to be taking that notion to heart. The set, off in the desert outside Albuquerque, is coated with fine sand like red flour. The stuff gets into everything, and you can't help but pity the freaky-looking extras huddling around heaters during down time on the night shoot, who have to endure the impossibly fine dust while wearing spooky contact lenses.

Bats swoop, eating bugs attracted by the lights surrounding the set of the off-the-beaten-track diner where Michael and a small group of human survivors are holed up for an apocalyptic siege. The unreality of the set is accentuated by flashes of dry lighting on the horizon, making everything feel apocalyptic without the benefit of special effects.Which might be exactly what effects-specialist-turned-director Stewart might be going for.

"[I'm trying to] build sequence after sequence, which hopefully just sort of ratchets up the suspense and which doesn't necessarily do it with visual pyrotechnics, but which tries to do it quietly in an increasingly brooding kind of way, and then we have all hell break loose," Stewart says during a break in filming. "There's Paul Bettany running around with machine guns trying to kill bad guys. He said something really funny the first day. He had an MP-5 and an M-16 in his hands, and he's running out of the diner firing away, unloading full magazines. And he said, 'I was in the Royal Shakespeare Company, but THIS is why I became an actor!'"Legion opens Jan. 22, 2010.

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Enjoy The Prologue From My Upcoming Book.. "Strolok"............by R.Goldberg

"WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOUR RACE WAS TARGETED FOR EXTINCTION?"

The Sun is a powerful force in our Universe. It brings us light, warmth and a promise of a galaxy beyond the stars. Often we associate massive flashes of light with the reflection of our Sun's light bouncing off of another surface.

This is not always the case though, especially if you believe that we are truly not alone in the Universe. When we witness things that we can't readily explain we sometimes turn our heads and shrug our shoulders in a display of apathy.

A display such as this occurred on Friday January 29, 1982 at the Crater Lake National Park just outside of Chemult, Oregon. The snow had been falling steadily for a period of four days. The winds had been whisking about at 40 miles per hour.
Then there was one of those unnatural flashes of light. This created an eerie silence as a lanky boy, just nine years old, seemed to appear from out of that flash. If he had walked to this point there would have been a distinct trail in the newly fallen snow.
There was no trail and as a matter of fact the only tracks in the snow were the ones that outlined his feet where he was standing.

He began to trudge through the snow wearing what could only be described as dark brown long johns. He seemed dazed yet, at the same time, very clear about the direction that he was travelling. This boy with no identity or name seemed to be on a mission that would take him to places he had never been before.
His main goal was to reach Chemult, Oregon and he had no intention of stopping until he accomplished this. As strange as it seems the extreme cold seemed to have little or no effect on him at all.

Why Chemult? What was so special about this town located at an elevation of 4,758 feet above sea level in a frozen winter wilderness in Oregon?

The town of Chemult was first opened to the local traffic in 1926 and here in 1982, with its population of only 241, offered little in the way of comfort for a nine year old boy who was all alone. This journey, although prompted by something deep inside of him, did not provide a feeling of comfort and yet he had hoped that he would at least experience a feeling of accomplishment once he reached the town.

The wind was getting stronger and he noticed a small piece of yellow paper tattered and torn from whipping about in the snow. He only stopped long enough to
pick up this paper..........it read:

.....With the winter season here there was a lot of fun to have. Travelling miles of open trails on snow mobiles skiing or simply hiking, but there are dangers of doing so. Please remember safety first. Do not travel alone and be sure someone knows where you are and where you are going before travelling our trails, and please read the safety rules and codes of ethics before hiking the trails...

Nightfall was near and he had already walked 38 of the 40 miles needed to reach Chemult. He was just off of Route 97 when he spotted an old barn just about 200 feet NE of his present location. Making his way to the barn he went in and found it to be totally deserted, it was a perfect place to rest for the night.

Morning had arrived and once awake the boy started to look around the barn in the daylight light to see if there was anything that was lying in the barn that he could use to assist him on his trek.

Over in the far corner of the barn he found an old metal locked box that had long been forgotten. It was all rusted out and the key was nowhere to be found. After several failed attempts to open the box the young boy closed his eyes, sat back on his tired limbs and placed the palm of his right hand on top of the box. All of a sudden a dull red glow appeared from his right palm and the box lid flew open. Strangely enough once the red glow disappeared all that remained was a faint thin black outline where the outside of the red mark had appeared on his palm. Inside of the box he found several items all of which were unfamiliar to him and it was obvious that they had been there
for a very long time.

The contents included a tattered passport with the picture missing, a pocket knife, a compass, an antique pocket watch with a broken crystal, a time-worn souvenir porcelain coffee mug with the words; "Atlanta, Georgia, The Peach State, A Perfect Place to Live", on it and a frayed map of the Metro Atlanta Area It was difficult to make out the name on the passport but with a couple of light brushes with his fingers he saw the name Jason Tredmore. This is now who this boy would become.

Sci-Fi Blast

Friday, August 21, 2009