The Walking Dead: Norman Reedus Talks Season 3 and Starring in the Upcoming Video Game

Daryl Dixon has become a very popular aspect of The Walking Dead, as witnessed by all the cheers his first appearance onscreen garnered when footage was shown at the recent Walking Dead panel at New York Comic Con – which only got louder when Norman Reedus himself took to the stage.

I spoke to Reedus about his fan-favorite character and the changes he’s gone through, not to mention how his key relationships will evolve in Season 3 – including Daryl’s unlikely friendship with Carol and the much-anticipated return of brother Merle Dixon (Michael Rooker). We also discussed his starring role in Activision's upcoming Walking Dead first-person shooter.

IGN TV: It’s been an interesting journey for your character so far, in that he’s beginning to fit in, in a way he might not have necessarily ever thought he would. How would you describe his role in the group this season?

Norman Reedus: Well, I hate that term “Number Two…” There’s a difference between Daryl and Shane. Daryl in no way wants to lead this group. There are certain moments in Season 3 when he has to, and he’s good to jump on it, a quick initiative: “I’ll handle this, you handle this, I’ll take care of that.” He handles it very efficiently and forcefully, but he never wants to sit down in a room full of people and be like, “This is where we’re at. This is what we’ve got to do.” You know, he’s not really that guy. In Season 2, there were some moments when we were looking for Sophia where Daryl would head out and Rick would go, “No, stop! Let’s make a plan and handle this correctly.” Then Daryl would say, “No, man. I’m better off on my own.” So he’s still that guy. But these people relying on him for their safety and trusting him is a big deal to Daryl. For the first time in his life he feels like he’s a member of something, that he’s important to other people. It’s interesting, because a lot of people are getting harder -- and Daryl’s still hard, but he’s sort of opening up as a person, which is interesting. And he’s the only character really doing that.

Norman Reedus as Daryl Dixon in The Walking Dead.

IGN: Right. Rick’s kind of gone in the other direction. Do you think he respects Rick’s new stance?

Reedus: That term “Ricktatorship” -- I was there when it started, and it started with a tweet -- but it’s not really accurate, to be honest. He’s not up in a tower. “You do this against your will!” It’s really not like that. There was a moment, but it’s not really the situation. I know magazines and newspapers, it’s the catchphrase -- it’s really not that. It’s different now because we all work as a group, and it really feels like a family. With Merle being in the picture now -- Daryl always wants to be with Merle. Merle is always looking for Daryl, and that’s brought up throughout the entire season. The problem is, he’s like a bull in a china shop; he’s the drunk uncle you take to a Christmas party. He’s like, “Shut up, man. Shut up!” We also have new people, new characters, and there’s a lot of toes being stepped on. A lot of people want to take matters into their own hands and can’t. There’s a lot of head-butting going on. And there’s just as much conflict on the inside as there is on the outside this year. You know, Rick is still Rick. He might be going darker, but he still won’t squash a bug. Daryl squashes everything and doesn’t understand why someone would yell at him for it. He kicks the kid, going, “What do you mean? He’s in the way.” It’s all the same, it’s just amped up quite a bit.

IGN: Was it exciting to play out the reunion between Merle and Daryl when so much has changed for these two guys?

Reedus Yeah, my backstory with Merle is a huge part of Season 3. You find out reasons why there is even more conflict than you assumed between them. But there’s also the heartache and the situations you’ve gone through, and they bond you as a duo. So there’s a bond there that’s thicker than glue, and it’s hard to break. But there’s also a mold that goes with that that’s being broken, if that makes sense. You’re under the thumb of your big brother who’s a racist and takes drugs -- he’s just an all-around a**hole -- and as a kid you grow up being embarrassed by that. You don’t want to be that racist guy. Or he’s taking drugs and I’d rather be an Al-Anon member than an Alcoholics Anonymous member. I’ve grown up with it and hated it. So there were scripts that came out where I took drugs and said things that were very Merle-like, and I fought against it and ended up not doing it because of that very reason. Once I explained myself… The writers are very gracious to us and work with us, an amazing team of writers that don’t just tell us what to do; we’re very hands on with them, and they created these great things for us to say and do. This is really my first TV life. In films, you go from here to here. In TV, you go here and plant these seeds and hope people are watching, and then they turn into things. And those things have all become story points now. So you find out how abused he was as a kid, and that causes a lot of tension, but it almost brings you together in a certain way. There’s so much tension going on right now.

IGN: I think people tend to forget that Daryl and Merle were never on screen together in Season 1. The only time we saw you together was in the hallucination episode. Was it interesting for you to finally play what we’ve heard so much about - this dynamic between you and [Michael] Rooker?

Reedus: Yeah. And the way that initially happens in Season 3 is -- it’s huge, I can’t even really hint at what that is. But it’s not what you expect.

Reedus discusses Daryl and Carol's relationship and starring in the upcoming Walking Dead first-person shooter game on Page 2.

Source : ign[dot]com

Deadpool: An Article About a Video Game

Deadpool breaks the fourth-wall like he breaks faces: violently and unapologetically. It’s the most striking aspect of the first game to star the Merc with a Mouth as its lead character. Until now he’s always appeared in supporting roles, gently mocking video game conventions. In Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, for instance, he could dismantle the health bar suspended above his head and use it as a weapon to beat his opponent with.

So far he’s only toyed with such tropes. But now, finally pushed front and centre stage, Deadpool is able to take on some of those trite conventions. His sardonic swagger is present right from the game’s amusing menu screen. Suddenly, Deadpool’s masked face appears alongside the standard options to start a new game or load an existing one. He’s really close, his distinctive eyes blinking, pressing against the screen. He moves back a few steps, and starts to tap the glass of your television set, before asking, “Hey, got any girls in there?”

He knows he's in a video game, and is acutely aware of the gender breakdown that his game will potentially attract. And that’s exactly how it’s being described – it’s Deadpool’s game. Even Sean Miller (the game’s actual director) presents it as Wade Wilson's own creation. Deadpool knows that you’re sat there with a controller in your hands.

All we’ve seen of the game so far has been to some footage in the Comic Con announcement trailer. Today at Gamescom I got to see an early demo of a level in the game. It was still very much a work in progress – some animations still needed fine tuning and the HUD wasn’t finalised – but it already looked good and surprisingly polished.

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Deadpool knows that you’re sat there with a controller in your hands.

The mission set-up is quite generic, but you get the feeling that’s an intentional decision. The level's opening cutscene finds Deadpool in his unhygienic apartment, draped in an armchair, scratching his crotch with a gun. He’s accepted a mission to assassinate a corrupt media mogul, whose television channel produces such quality programming as “Jump the Shark”, in which ‘celebrities’ must literally jump over a tank of water containing a ravenous great white shark.

So far, so knowing, and this extends to the gameplay itself.

The mission starts with Deadpool in a sewer beneath mogul’s high-rise building. It’s a basically a tutorial level, presenting Deadpool with an irresistible opportunity to directly address you, the player. He tells you to press ‘A’ to jump. And when presented with the right combination of platforms, he wearily suggests the novel idea of ‘wall jumping’. He never shuts up. He’s a medically diagnosed psychotic, and has multiple voices rattling around his head. You hear them interacting constantly, vying for his attention. Miller describes it as having “the three stooges in your head”.

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Players will be presented with the choice either to reattach severed limbs or wait for them to regrow.

As always, it’s hard to really know how good the combat is without going hands-on with the game. But it relies heavily on using the character’s trademark arsenal of swords and guns, as well as giving players the option to equip more irregular weapons like sledgehammers. From this demo it wasn't really clear how his superhuman abilities would come into play. Like Wolverine, Deadpool possesses an accelerated healing factor. It’s promised that in the final game Deadpool will slowly fall apart as he sustains damage, similar to the protagonist in Konami's Neverdead. Players will be presented with the choice either to reattach severed limbs or wait for them to regrow. You can imagine the former as a way to quickly restore health, though this wasn’t confirmed. His ability to teleport has yet to be mentioned, too.

Probably the strongest aspect of the demo I saw was Deadpool’s extensive knowledge of popular culture and the game’s intertextual playfulness. He struts while humming Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal as he breaks into the building of his intended target. He quotes Star Trek (“Make it so number one”) and Star Wars (“I’ve got a bad feeling about this”) within seconds of each other. The best allusion, however, belonged to the menu screen. Select a new game, and you hear something very familiar slowly fade in – the distinctive percussion of the Terminator theme tune starts to thump, as Deadpool is lowered down, presumably into the game, and as he is about to disappear offscreen, he raises his arm and gives a thumbs up. It’s a touching and wry tribute to the noble T-800.

Given the game’s fondness for allusion, the decision to cast Nolan North makes perfect sense. Not only has he played the character before but his vocal ubiquity in video games – he’s the voice of Nathan Drake, Desmond in Assassin’s Creed, and so many others – fits perfectly with the game’s metafictional aspirations. The game looks like a lot of fun but ultimately the writing will have to be pitch-perfect to make Deadpool a success. If it strays too frequently, becoming more crass than clever, it could easily fall into the trap of becoming the kind of game it’s attempting to parody.

Daniel is IGN's UK Staff Writer. You can be part of the world's worst cult by following him on IGN and Twitter.

Source : ign[dot]com

Silent House Blu-ray Review

In 1948 Alfred Hitchcock made a film called Rope, an ingenious thriller about two men who host a dinner party shortly after murdering a classmate they deem inferior. The ingenious aspect of the narrative is coupled with an equally ingenious method of cinematography, in that the film is made to look as though it were shot entirely in just one take.

Shoot to 2012, this very same technique is being used once more, but with a slightly fresh twist. In Silent House, we follow Sarah (Elizabeth Olsen), a young girl who ends up trapped inside a house while it is seemingly robbed. But things get more terrifying when it becomes clear to Sarah that the strangers may be omnipotent in nature.

Told entirely from Sarah's perspective, this one-take thriller unfolds right before your eyes in a surprisingly chilling manner. Alas, Silent House, from Open Water directors Chris Kentis and Laura Lau (who also scripted), is no Rope. Rather, the film is a messy exploration of someone's madness painted with a thin veil of ghostly horror. As such, the film has very little replay value and is nowhere near as memorable as Alfred Hitchcock's classic.

The biggest problem with the film is in its twist. Without giving too much away, let's just say that the means do not justify the whole. In other words, Silent House is a film built on a lie. This wouldn't be much of a problem if the twist didn't negate the rest of the story that happened before it.

On some level, the twist is fascinating. It adds a layer of subtext that otherwise wouldn't be there in a generic horror film. However, it also makes for an unsatisfying whole that asks far too many questions and leaves the audience with almost no answers.

Cinematography, despite having a video-like appearance, is quite brilliant. The execution of the one-take visuals is expertly done. And the film's haunting foes are often rather creepy. Elizabeth Olsen, who basically controls the entire picture, is absolutely staggering here as well. While her sisters were not the world's greatest actresses, Elizabeth shows more promise than the both of them combined, and then some.

Silent House certainly boasts some interesting ideas, along with a great performance from Olsen, but the film simply has no replay value. It's not a very satisfying experience, and sometimes, because the audiences never privy to all that's going on inside the house, the one-take cinematography does dampen the thrills. However, if you're up for something that ultimately plays things a little more psychological than horrifying, Silent House should prove to be an interesting deviation from the normal genre fare.

The film comes to Blu-ray courtesy of Universal Studios Home Entertainment. It is presented in 1.85:1 widescreen, in 1080p/AVC with 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio. Shot on video, largely in the dark, Silent House does not always boast the finest image. There's quite a bit of motion blur, noise and other minor distortions. The encode is mostly decent, though, other than some minor banding.

Audio is fairly effective though not nearly as immersive as expected. Dialogue is clean, with no distortions or crackles. Surrounds are aggressive on occasion, but more subdued than I would have hoped. Given the one-take nature of the production, I would have expected a mix that relied on audio for thrills, and while Silent House does do that every once in awhile, sound design is a bit more muted and quiet, leaving the audience underwhelmed.

Extras are fairly thin. There's a commentary track from co-directors Chris Kentis and Laura Lau. It's an interesting track that explores both the story and the film's elaborate cinematography. It'll really make you wish the film were just a little bit better. The disc also boasts Universal's traditional extras like BD-Live and pocketBlu. The BD also includes a DVD and Digital Copy of the film.

Silent House is a film worth exploring, if only once. It boasts a few decent scares and a great performance from Elizabeth Olsen, but it can't shake the stale story and dull twist that very nearly ruins the entire picture.

Source : ign[dot]com