Resident Evil: Apocalypse

Let us keep in mind that this is a movie based on a video game and that thus far I can't think of a game-based movie that has been absolutely fantastic -- these movies are meant to appeal to folks who have played the games and, like games, just be something entertaining to watch with belief suspended. Movies like these aren't here to make us cry or think or inspire us, really. That said...

It was an entertaining film and I found it far more enjoyable than the second "Matrix" film, actually. "Apocalypse" feels much more like the games than its predecessor. The city, the piles of cars, the trolleys, the old church, the crawley mutant zombies... they all felt like they did in the games, as did the characters and their action-figure cool 2-dimensional personalities. So, while none of that is even thinkable as Oscar material, it's dead-on for a video game-to-screen flick.

The original film had a better air to it - more mystery, though they really could of done better by really playing up the Alice in Wonderland thing they kinda half-heartedly had going. Sorta. There was no mystery with "Apocalypse" - especially with Nemesis. First of all, Nemesis wasn't scary at all - he's heart-pounding, piss-your-pants FREAKY in the games. You DREAD meeting him in the games. Here? He's just some monster we KNOW Alice is going to whup. :\ Also, I had totally forgotten that Matt had been captured along with Alice in the end of the first movie. So they totally could of tried to fake us out and played out the true origin of Nemesis like a mystery. If it didn't fool the folks who watched the first film it at least would of fooled people who HADN'T seen the first film. Because we knew from the start, all the flashbacks became tedious and pedantic. They really could of done better.

The ending was a bit drawn out. 2 hours later, 2 days later, 3 weeks later... geez! It looks like there are plans for a third movie, so why not just have shown them crashing, shown the Umbrella soldiers hauling off with Alice's body and be done with it... leave it on an uncomfortable, unfinished note. Instead, it was like they tried cramming the first half of the third film into the last 10 minutes and I just feel like they told us too much. I can guess what the third film would be about easily.

now for the good stuff.

Alice had a much better outfit - rather, a bit more practical if still a bit stylish than practicality would have demanded in realistic circumstances. But this isn't a realistic film, so -- she did look hot in the first film but I liked the netting shirt and all the buckles and the semi-dreded hair. Jill looked like she did in the game so I guess that's her excuse for a skimpy outfit but her attitude really went with it - I hope they have more of Jill in the third film (assuming there is a third). Kinda missed that there were NO "knowing glances" and heart rending moments between Alice and anyone like there was between Alice and the mercenary woman in the first film, which really caught me off guard when I first saw it. It's not just me and wishful thinking, these woman felt something there...

I liked how Alice and the girl both had the T-virus and how that seems to of started a bond of some sort between them, the fact that they both have it and aren't zombies. Maybe they'll use that in the third film the way they used Matt (Nemesis) and Alice's mutations to pull them into an alliance at the end of this film. I like the injustice and I really hope that's the point of the third film - revenge for the injustice done to so many.

And of course, Milla is a joy to watch. Not her best performance, though. :\ I don't think she had much to work with. Alice in the first film at least had amnesia and was slowly coming out of her foggy fake 'i'm just a wife' haze and having her head of security mode kicking back in... she got to work with more emotion (as much emotion as one can have in a game film). This time, though, her character has been there, done that and is pissed off in a single minded way. Like I said, not much to work with. Ah, well.

Oh, gaping plot hole -- the zombies that come out of the graves. I think they do that in the games, but there's no logic to how that would work. This whole thing started with the shattering of the container that held the virus, which spread through the air and contaminated all the lab workers and people inside the Hive. They all turned into Zombies who can pass on the virus by biting their victims. When the first team went into the Hive to shut it down, there was no more T-virus in the air, just in the zombies. Our heroes sort of escape and the Hive is locked up. Then in "Apocalypse", scientists open the hive back up and zombies get out. If there was no more virus in the air in the FIRST film, then the T-virus could only have been spread by zombie-bite to the citizens of Raccoon City. So how did the corpses end up reanimating? And all at the same TIME, too. :P

The only other major thing that bothered me was the weird cinematography of the fight scenes. Up-close and really blurry to save bucks on actually training the actors and showing really cool REALISTIC fight moves. Even MOREso than Xena (and I love Xena...). Other than the fight scenes, most of the framing was actually not bad and they used interesting lighting (for an all-night movie) and the angles weren't static.

Ohh! I TOTALLY didn't see the reporter dying when she did - it caught me off guard the way she went in such an easy way. I thought she'd be grossed out by the kid and run, but nope, that was her demise.

That lunch lady was perfect.

[Edit:] hallalundi mentioned that there are interesting paralells between Resident Evil and Alien - between what happens to Alice and what happens to Ripley, the way they both start out just doing their jobs, are thrust into fighting terrible creatures and then BECOME the monsters themselves. Heck, there's even the two outsiders bonding - Ripley/Call and Alice/the girl.

I'm glad I went to see it in the theatre anyway, because it was fun and there's lots of things you'd only know if you played the games - and I used to watch Eric play the games and I'd play RE: Survivor, and Trey, Eric and I watched the first film on the computer together, and Eric and I have been anticipating the sequel since January... :P AND we knew what to expect ahead of time. If I'd had high expectations, I would have been disappointed, but I didn't so all was well. I just watch these films seeing all the POTENTIAL and I think that makes me kinda forgiving.

Farscape

I remember when I hadn't ever heard of "Farscape" and Trey was trying to describe it to me. Everything I pictured was SO off. And when I finally watched an episode, it was somewhere in the middle of the series, when Criton was being his snarky self - I thought he was a jerk.

But when I finally watched Season 1 in order from the beginning, I was suprised by the quality effects, the quality acting, the imaginative and explanitory plotlines, and the intriguing characters. It's such an enormous show! Even the PLOTS are enormous - the entire show is nothing but gigantic story arcs! Well, that's exaggerating a bit, but it does make it hard to just jump in and know what's going on. (Thank goodness the library has all the season on DVD).

I also love how they have one of the better answers to the alien translation problem.
And Criton's character in first Season is so clueless - this is someone from our time on earth in an alien galaxy who has no idea how things work. So he asks the questions we're dying to know. We relate to him - that could be us and through him the other alien characters become more acessable where I think they otherwise would not have been so easy to get to know, had Criton been FROM their world.

Highly creative show: creative visuals, creative characters, creative plots. Interesting and entertaining, it never gets old and it's one of the more original television series I have ever seen.

Neko Case

Neko Case... it's funny that I'm such a big fan of her music. I love her voice and her attitude. I say it's funny because I generally don't care for country music. People call Neko Case "alt-country" but really all she's doing is writing her music in the fashion of old-style country. Alongside her own original songs, she covers old classic country songs and they all go together well. So I guess maybe I might like old fashioned country. *shrugs*.

Her music has this haunting, murder-mystery twang to it. It has definite atmosphere. And her voice has POWER, even in gentle songs, this woman can belt it out. Her older albums are more honky-tonk flavored and the newer the album the less country twang, like you're peeling down to the heart of her personal style as time rolls on. If you like country, then "Furnace Room Lullabies" is a good album to start with (it's the one I started with, though I am no country fan - the album artwork is what grabbed me, heh). If you aren't so much into country, then try "Blacklisted".

The other thing I love about Neko is, like I said, her attitude. The often conservative air of a lot of country music really scares me and puts me off. So to have this gal who outrightly will tell you she loves porn, who doesn't care if she sings songs about loving women (and she's not lesbian), plays her guitar with it slung low about her waist like a rock-star, and talks about feeding extra children to the tigers to help save them (the tigers - it was a JOKE - on her latest album, "The Tigers Have Spoken")... well, somehow, folks like that seem a bit friendlier to me than flag-waving, bible-praising, Bush-loving country stars. <:) (Do NOT take offense! I mean it in a snarky, "I'm too headstrong for my own good" way <:) GO NEKO!

JBL Creature II speakers

I finally got some speakers for my computer! I'd been shopping around online, reading up on what's good out there. I had limited myself to $100 but there's a lot of crappy speakers out there for under $100 and I wanted something good.

I'd read about the Creature II speakers and they sounded like a good deal but with speakers you have to hear them before buying. Then one day I happened into an Apple Store where they had a Mac set up with Creatures. The guy in the shop played some music on the computer and this wonderful, clear, deep sound was heard. I was amazed. I pointed at the little sattellite speakers and I said, "That's coming out of THOSE?", unsure because there was another set of speakers set up next to the creatures, obviously for comparison.

I bought the Creatures right then and there. White, for $90. In hindsight, you can get the same speakers for $70 on Amazon.com and they now come in a variety of colors. But white matches my Apple keyboard and mouse so I am fine with it.

So the sound quality is great with a knob for each the bass and for the treble. Quality music (songs not ripped at a low level) doesn't buzz. Music is pretty rich and clear. The sound input is the same sort of connection you'd plug into a headphone jack on a discman - so you can plug these speakers directly into your computer, discman, walkman, mp3 player, etc, which makes them kind of handy.

The apperance turns some people off. "Jellyfish" and "Storm Trooper Helmet" are two descriptors. I think they're kind of cute. The competing speaker set are the Harman-Kardon Sound Sticks, which to me look like phallic sex toys - and while they apparently have better sound quality, the Creatures are good enough for me. I'd rather have interestingly shaped speakers than ugly generic box speakers.

Also nice is the footprint of the satellite tweeters - they're small, about the size of my fist.

All in all I absolutely love these speakers and so far everyone I've showed them to has been suprised at the quality of sound that comes out of them. Easy to use, easy to set up, and nice to look at and listen to. 5 out of 5 stars.

Fahrenheit 9/11 [film]

So today we went and saw Fahrenheit 9/11. Had me patriotic with tears, sad with tears, and angry with tears. A much rougher film than Bowling for Columbine - probably due to the seriousness of the subject - not that the subjects covered by Moore's previous films are not devastatingly serious in their own rights; just that I think more peoples lives are being threatened by what was covered in Fahrenheit.

I agree with Trey that I think it would have been more powerful had I not already known the message and the proof against Bush from reading books about it; I felt that the movie, as long as it was, was still too short. Something this huge cannot be explained so quickly -- but then, Americans aren't all book readers and movies are much more accessible in many ways. :\

In the very least, I wish people would quit bashing a movie they've never seen. It is by far one of the MOST patriotic films I've ever seen. It says more about our humanity than most other films do and says more to gain support for what our soldiers are going through, what our public is going through, and what the people of Iraq are going through and never in a demeaning way. The film also importantly shows us images of the war that the media have somehow neglected to show. What our soldiers really see, how the fight really looks, and how people over there on either side really feel.

This film does a lot to break down the facade our "president" has erected, true, but it does a lot more, I think, to show how most of the American public really feels and to unveil the truth that's going on around us that our media and government has elected to sweep under the rug.

Harry Potter & the Prizoner of Azkaban [film]

To keep it shorter than long:
I liked this third installment in the HP series. I think it captured the energy of the third book and tried hard to keep the essence of the plot. The third book is so damn huge there's no way to put it into one entire movie, so cutting out elements and rearranging others was neccessary to keep the momentum going.

Hogwarts grounds weren't how I imagined them to be, but I did enjoy the look of it nonetheless. I was kind of annoyed that the entrance to Gryffindor commons was right where anyone could see it rather than being secret like it is in the books. Some people had commented on the Whomping Willow being too small or something - I thought it was perfect and looked better than the one in the second film. Lessee... I liked how the arguments between Hermione and Ron over Scabbers and Crookshanks was more incidental - that way, Scabbers' true identity would be more of a suprise to non-book-readers. That and the fact that arguments like that between friends ARE often background things as compared to overall HUGE things in life.

I enjoyed the effects in the film - the Mauraders Map was well done (I watched all of the end credits to watch all the little feet, though it got a tad monotonous after awhile). The Patronus spell was FANTASTIC and actually gave me the chills when I saw it the first time by the pond/lake. I liked Buckbeak and thought that Lupin's werewolf form was well done, though a bit more emaciated than I'd imagined.

The acting was also superb - especially the three kids, they've really grown up. Lupin was great, too - that actor hardly ever gets to play good guys. I know that the new Dumbledore was supposed to play Dumbledore HIS way and not try to be Richard Harris, because you can't replace a person. But I still just like Richard Harris' Dumbledore better. *shrugs*

Dude, Where's My Country?

I'm glad I went to the library yesterday. I had Michael Moore's "Dude, Where's My Country" in at the library and I was fresh out of new reading material. I started reading it today and I'm halfway through already and feel furious and helpless about my country and the way it's being run. How can we possibly avoid having ultra-rich morons who have their fingers in corporations around the world as our leaders when they're the only ones RICH enough to run for president? There's NEED for a law to make it so you can't use over a certain amount to campaign... It's a monopoly on who's running - if you're poor and local, no one will ever hear about you. It's sad.

All I can say about this book is that if you are unsatisfied with the obvious lies George W. has been feeding our country, just pick up this book somewhere and READ it. Easy read, funny read, educated read with lots of articles backing it up that you can apparently find on his site: www.michaelmoore.com -- actually, if you can't afford the book or can't find it at your local library, just go to his site and read some of the things there.

He's a compelling guy. It frustrates me that he's one of the few out and loud sources of the other side of the Bush/invasion(war if you wanna call it that) stories that the media feeds us. And didn't I just post a HUGE two-parter post about how much I hate lying and liars? I'm beginning to think I can't even watch TV without being pumped full of lies by the networks. ~*sigh*~ From now on, I'm sitting on the couch with a big bag of large-grained salt.