issue 30 // volume 42

Remembering Anton Yelchin

> A look at Yelchin’s out-of-this-world career

Cheryl Minns
Columnist

 

n accomplished 27-year-old actor
with over 60 film and television
credits, Anton Yelchin died suddenly in
a freak car accident on June 19. Although
his passing was tragic, he left behind
a collection of films and TV shows
that showcase his amazing talent.

Star Trek films (2009-2016)

Yelchin appeared in several iconic
movie franchises, but is best known
for his portrayal of Pavel Chekov in the
Star Trek reboot. The third film in the
franchise was filmed in Vancouver and
is scheduled for release on July 22.

Like the character of Chekov,
Yelchin was born to Russian parents
in Leningrad, Russian SFSR, USSR
(now St. Petersburg, Russia). However,
despite his familiarity with the Russian
language and accent, he chose not to use
areal Russian accent in his performance
because he felt it wouldn't be true to the
character from the 1960's TV series.

“The interesting thing about it is that
his accent is a Cold War stereotype of a
Russian person,” Yelchin told TrekMovie.
com. “It was fun to purposefully mess
around with the Russian accent, to
purposefully change what I thought
a Russian accent was to suit that
stereotype they had in the ’60s.”

Terminator: Salvation (2009)

Yelchin also appeared in the
Terminator series, where he was
introduced in the series’ fourth film.

He played a teenage Kyle Reese, who
would later go on to father John Connor,
the head of the resistance against the
machines. The role was initially much
more significant until rewrites reworked
the story and reduced Reese’s character.
When Terminator Salvation and
the first Star Trek film came out in the

 

spring of 2009, Yelchin admitted, “I have
an aversion to remakes, which is ironic
because I’m in two of them right now.”

Charlie Bartlett (2007)

This coming-of-age comedy featured
Yelchin as a spoiled, preppy high
schooler who attends public school for

arts // no. 9

the first time after being kicked out of
another private school. He soon becomes
the students’ personal psychiatrist,
prescriptions and all. Yelchin starred
alongside two Marvel actors in this
film— Iron Man’s Robert Downey Jr. and
Thor’s Kat Dennings—before either of
them entered the superhero universe.

Taken (2002 mini-series)

One of Yelchin’s earlier works was
the Sci-Fi Channel (now SyFy) mini-
series Taken (2002), which was filmed in
Vancouver, The series aired on CBC for
Canadian viewers. Taken followed three
families who were affected by alien visits
from 1944 to 2002. Yelchin played Jacob
Clarke, a human-alien hybrid, in the 1950s
and 1960s episodes. His performance in
the series was nominated for a Young
Artist Award in 2003. This followed his
2002 win of the Young Artist Award for his
performance in Hearts in Atlantis (2001).

Although Yelchin is gone, he still
has four more films to be released
in 2016-17. The family drama We
Don’t Belong Here is about a mother
who hits her breaking point after her
son (Yelchin) disappears. Porto is a
romance about a life-changing night
for a French woman and an American
man (Yelchin)} in Porto, Portugal. The
psychological thriller Thoroughbred
follows two suburban teenage girls who
try to rekindle their volatile friendship.
Rememory, a sci-fi mystery filmed in
Vancouver, follows a widow who uses her
late husband’s invention that can record
and play the memories of a person.

Photo via http://deadline.com/

Chairman of the Board: No Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

> ‘Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar’ game review

Ed Appleby
Illustrator

 

all the coherence of ancient
Mayan hieroglyphs, I did not
come into the game with high

L* in ancient Mesoamerica
can be a tough go—balancing
day-to-day survival with piety
and commerce. Luckily the
gears of this game are well-
oiled and run like clockwork.
Tzolk’in: The Mayan
Calendar is a worker placement
game for 2-4 players designed
by Simone Luciani and Daniele
Tascini, published by Czech
Games Edition in 2012. Each
turn you can place or remove
workers from a system of gears
that turn in tandem with a giant
Mayan calendar, collecting
various awards depending on
their position once removed. The
game ends when the calendar
has made one full revolution.
Mousetrap this isn’t. I
am usually very leery about
games with moving parts, and
once you add the fact that the
rulebook was long and had

hopes. However, once I started
to play, I realized the game
abides by standard worker
placement mechanics, and
the elegance and simplicity of
the gameplay won me over.
Timing is the essence of
this game—being able to only
either place or remove workers
during your turn and trying to
time against the calendar in
order to most efficiently benefit

your strategy becomes your goal.

Like many eurostyle games, it
suffers from some “competitive
solitaire” and “point salad”
aspects, but I found it didn’t
detract from the gameplay.

I would recommend this
game to anyone in search of
a smooth worker placement
game—but, like searching
out any Mayan temple
nowadays, I would recommend
letting someone who has
played before guide you.

 

Illustration by Ed Appleby