1. Dracula vs Frankenstein Shoes

Ok, so these are a little cutesy. A lot cutesy. But guys! Dracula! On your shoes! With his pal Frankenstein! Kind of sweet, no? And yet, somehow all I can think of is that bit from Ed Wood, “Karloff…? Sidekick…? FUCK YOU.” Perhaps it’s best that Bela didn’t live to see these shoes.

2. Zombie Rabbits Limited Edition Print

Bunnies + zombies. Everyone wins.

3. First Born Creeps Candlesticks

I love these little guys. Can you imagine a small army of them marching, slithering, or stuttering their way across your Thanksgiving table? Me too.

4. Cthulhu Necklace

Beautiful. There’s nothing that makes it more Cthulhu than octopus, but beautiful nonetheless. (And anyway, we all know that octopi are scarily smart and eerily prescient, right? So, still horror-related?)

5. Ted Box Art Print

I’ve had this artist’s robot box art prints bookmarked in my “wishlist” folder for over a year now. They’re two parts retro-futurism and one part affectionate nostalgia. A perfect mix.

Vin Diesel’s been an inexplicable movie mega-star for enough years that I don’t think The Chronicles of Riddick needs any introduction, but if you’re not a late night TV aficionado you may have missed the commercials for the Riddex pest control product line.  Allow me to fill you in.

I'm sorry, Dave. I can't do that. I tried it before and I was sore for weeks.

As explained on the company’s web site, Riddex Pro is a pest killer like no other.  Why is that?  Because you plug it in your wall.  No, for real.  The product sends “digital pulses” through your house’s wiring that somehow repel everything from rats to cockroaches, yet supposedly cause no harm to humans and pets.  Well, except pet rats.  Those would probably die.  Hedgehogs too.  Choose your pets carefully.

I’ve been doing some crappy research (cresearch?) on this product for a few hours now, and I still have no idea how the hell it’s supposed to work.  It’s something about ultrasonic vibrations or electromagnetic fields or energon cubes or something.  Whatever it is, it’s calibrated just right so as not to scramble your brain.  Or it’s bullshit.  Or it’s not bullshit but it does scramble your brain, and rats and cockroaches are the only ones smart enough to get the hell out of your house before their heads explode.

Given the facts that the Federal Trade Commission has repeatedly fined Riddex for making completely unsubstantiated claims and that used Riddex units sell for like four bucks on eBay, there’s a good chance that it’s bullshit after all.  I still don’t like the idea of spending money on things that might kill me (except for, you know, booze), so I’d prefer to steer clear regardless.  Either way, Riddex loses some serious points against Riddick in our hypothetical little match-up.

Hey, what up?

Chronicles of Riddick is pretty fucking terrible, though.  In case you didn’t already know, it’s a sequel to Pitch Black, a super-rad sci-fi action movie that was essentially Aliens with a few cool gimmicks and some tasty B-movie grade pulp.  That was made way back in 2000, a slower, less furious time when star Vin Diesel was just some random dude with muscles.  Times changed, however, and Diesel became famous for some reason or another, requiring at least one of his previous movies to have a sequel.  I would have preferred Saving Private Ryan 2, but Hollywood decided to revisit Pitch Black instead.

Oh, and they fucked it up.  Since Pitch Black was such a simple, tight, one-shot premise movie that in no way demanded a sequel whatsoever, the filmmakers of Chronicles decided to use a bloated, LARPer-friendly storyline about space religions and magic mind powers to prop their movie up.  They tried to make this movie high fantasy so hard.  Shit, they even got one of the guys from LOTR to star in it.

But the real offense of Chronicles of Riddick, the thing that makes it such a strong competitor in awfulness to the Riddex pest mindfuck system, is what it did to Pitch Black. All new copies of Pitch Black are now sold as “The Chronicles of Riddick: Pitch Black.” I know it’s just a few words and a colon, but it’s goddamn inhuman to rename an awesome movie after a crappy one.  That aggression will not stand.

So which should you choose?  Which is least terrible?  It pains me to say it, but I’m going with Chronicles of Riddick. I can tolerate a boring series of speeches debating the merits of one imaginary space religion over another, but I can’t tolerate having my head explode when all I wanted to do was get rid of some silverfish.

ADVANTAGE: The Chronicles of Riddick

Ok, here we go again with another video game review.

A few months back I downloaded Mega Man 9 for the Nintendo Wii. It was like $10 bucks to download and a few extra bucks for harder game settings and stuff. As soon as I heard this game was coming out I wanted to download it, and as soon as I downloaded it I couldn’t wait to start playing it. But one thing had me more hyped than anything else, this game went old-school and had 8-bit style graphics! I’ve always loved Mega Man games because they’re fun, they have some sweet music and they have pretty good replay value. And Mega Man 9 is no exception, it’s got all the above.

So, the game starts off with a familiar scene. It’s the year 20XX and all is well until…..robots start going crazy and attacking the city! That’s right, Dr. Wily is back to his old tricks again. This time he’s taken Dr. Light’s robots, manipulated them to do his evil bidding and he’s trying to blame it all on the innocent Dr. Light. (What a dick). Now civilization’s salvation rests in the hands of the legendary blue bomber, Mega Man! And he’s rarin’ and ready to go kick some evil-robot ass!

"I'm a total dick!"

Alright, first things first, let’s talk about the look and feel of the game. For Mega Man 9 the guys at Capcom decided to go retro and make the game look like it came out of the 80’s. Now I’ve heard different opinions, for and against this decision, but I gotta say that I liked it. Some people were like “Man, they’re just trying to make it look old too cash in on how popular old games are now” or “They should’ve just made it a side scroller with updated graphics, this looks dumb.” And to that I just shake my head in disapproval. (You should just be happy that another Mega Man game is around for you to play). I think they made the game 8-bit style as like a fan-service to fans of the old Mega Man games. And personally, it did give me the feeling that I was playing an NES game. They even have a “legacy” option that will make the screen flicker like the old games did.

...just like back in the day

It wasn’t just classic looks they were going for either, the difficulty was like days past as well. Some people claim this game is too hard but I must respectfully disagree. I’ll admit that it’s tuff when you first start. I myself died several times and it took me forever to beat Magma Man with just the mega buster. (I didn’t know/didn’t have the tornado weapon he’s weak against). But what game isn’t hard the first time you try it out? I can’t help but think about when I was young and playing Mega Man 2. I thought I’d never beat it, let alone get past that damn giant robot dragon, but I did. Now I can smoke that game no problem. It’s the same with Mega Man 9. You just gotta play and play and play. Remember, through trial & error and memorizing the patterns you can beat this game.

Remember this pain in the ass?

In this game our hero performs like he did in Mega Man 1 and 2. He runs, he jumps, he shoots, and that’s about it. Of course, when a robot boss is defeated you can use a new weapon based on their power. You can’t slide and you can’t use the charge shot. (Well, you can do those things but I’ll explain that later). But he does have his trusty robot dog Rush again with whom he can use the Rush coil and Rush jet. Your little buddies Eddie and Beat make a return appearance as well, but you have to buy them at the store. There’s a store you can access in between levels. You pay with screws that you pick up in the game to buy things like extra lives, energy containers, and other handy items.

There’s extra content you can download for the game. And since I wanted to play everything possible I downloaded it on the spot. There’s hero mode (a harder version of the game), superhero mode (an even harder version of the game), and proto mode where you play as Protoman (this version is quite hard, too). In Proto mode you can slide, use the charge shot and use Protoman’s shield for defense. But, being Protoman comes at a price. You can only shoot two bullets at a time rather than 3, you take twice the damage from a hit, get knocked back twice as far from a hit, and you can’t use the shop to buy stuff. (Damn, that’s brutal.)

There’s also a special stage you can play with another robot boss, Fake Man. (Hilarious). And the endless mode where you just fight and fight till you can’t fight no mo’. Plus, if you’re a perfectionist, they have some personal challenges that range from the reasonable (beat a boss using only the Mega Buster or defeat 100 enemies in the game) to the just plain ri-damn-diculous (beat the game without taking any damage at all, WTF!)

Let’s talk about the music. Holy shit the music was awesome! It fits the 8-bit style perfectly. Before I got the game I thought “I hope the music is at least decent” and it blew me away. Again, opinions vary, but I think this was some of the best Mega Man music since Mega Man 2 & 3. (I especially like Concrete Man’s and Galaxy Man’s music.) The developers probably knew that they had to step it up and make some good music and they totally did.

Once again CAPCOM worked with one of their more famous, if not their MOST famous, franchises and gave us a great game. So, as if it wasn’t already clear, I really liked this game. Yeah, it was hard but it’s supposed to be hard. They wanted to give you a game that was tough and I enjoyed the challenge. After I beat this game I actually played it a few more times because I enjoyed it so much. The music rocked, the visuals were nostalgic and you got it all for less than $20 with all the other added content. Excellent work CAPCOM, please keep it up.

Netflix is great, but it does have its problems.  There’s the sometimes sheepish recommendations and the murky process known as throttling.  The worst, however, is searching for a movie that’s unavailable.

I’ve racked up a considerable “saved” queue since I began my membership last summer.  The following list is a mere sample of those unavailable titles that I’m itching to see.  Some of these might just be missing from my local distribution center, while I’m sure others are either out of print or never were in print.  Here’s hoping they make the jump to “very long wait” soon.

Cronos

im in ur mooveez. direktin ur hobits.

I want to write an article called “Guillermo del Toro: Hack or Genius?” but I figure I need to see this (Del Toro’s first feature length film) first.  I never know what to expect with this guy, and Cronos is no exception.  It’s about alchemy and vampires and stuff, so it might be in the vein of Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth, but it also has Ron Perlman and… well, vampires and stuff, so it might be closer to Hellboy and Blade II. At any rate, I’d like to see this before The Hobbit comes out.

Sleuth

It’s a mystery movie that pits Laurence Olivier against Michael Caine.  It’s also recommended by my dad.  Now, other people’s dads might just tell them to see Animal House or Stripes, but my dad’s previous picks have included A Boy and His Dog, Omega Man, and other 70s gems he saw working at a movie theatre in high school, so I can safely assume that this movie’s awesome.  Yes, I know there was a remake with Michael Caine in Olivier’s role and Jude Law in Caine’s, but I have about as much enthusiasm for that as I did for the Alfie remake.  I want the real thing.

Blue Gender: Disc Two

Gah, seriously?  So they have Blue Gender, but they’re missing the second disc?  I saw this anime series when Adult Swim ran the dubbed version a few years back, which is why I’m so pissed that the second disc is missing.  See, in the series’ first half (discs one to three), this was a show about survival, courage, and tremendous gore that could best be described as a cross between Aliens and 28 Days Later. However, in its second half (discs four to six) Blue Gender devolved into yet another bland Neon Genesis Evangelion clone about giant robots and teenage melodrama.  Netflix is never gonna replace just one disc, so it looks like I’ll have to buy the whole set, terrible discs included.

PRO TIP: If you do a Google Images search for "no escape" you're gonna find a whole lot of bondage pics.

No Escape

This delightful piece of mid-90s sci-fi action schlock used to make the rounds on cable TV but has since fallen into obscurity.  That’s a shame too, since it’s got Ray Liotta, Lance Henriksen, and the bad guy from Blank Check. (If you’re wondering, the plot concerns an island prison colony divided into good and evil camps, kind of like Lord of the Flies with grownups.)  Also, as a friend points out, it’s one of the few non-gay porno movies out there to feature an all-male cast.  I guess I can’t complain too much about Netflix not having a movie that I only plan on enjoying semi-ironically, but I still hope a copy comes their way.

Nine years later and I'm still waiting.

I spent most of December 31st, 1999 sitting in my room listening to Quartet for the End of Time with the lights turned off, pondering exactly how all existence would cease at the stroke of twelve.  Around ten o’clock my friends convinced me to go out to some New Year’s party, arguing that the apocalypse would be better experienced communally.  We were all gonna die together anyway, so why not hear each others’ screams as the heavens split in twain?

Then the ball dropped.  Dick Clark’s face was not melted off by a hydrogen bomb.  I was fucking pissed.

A little over three years earlier, FOX premiered a greatly hyped, highly anticipated show called Millennium. It featured much of the same creative team as The X-Files (most notably executive producer Chris Carter), but promised to be a darker, grittier show.  (Its tagline was “his curse is your salvation.”  Way cooler than “the truth is out there,” right?)  Millennium almost was the crazy, terrifying super X-Files it aspired to be, but (just like the real millennium) it came up short in the end.

The show followed retired FBI profiler Frank Black (Lance Henriksen, not the dude from the Pixies) as he hunted down serial killers, cultists and terrorists whose crimes seemed to portend a coming millennial apocalypse.  Millennium aired during the notoriously difficult Friday night spot and suffered on the ratings front from early on.  The show’s creative team tried damn near everything to get people to watch (often with disastrous results), but I think most of the series’ ills can simply be traced to how the show began.  Observe this real, unaltered frame from the title sequence:

Like, WTF?  It’s Friday night.  You have the option of sitting at home alone to watch a serial killer show or going to your local roller rink for some make-out action.  I’m no TV genius, but putting the words “who cares” in there was probably not the best idea.  However, if somehow you resisted the urge to lace up your skates, you would often be treated to a pretty rad show.

The show's filled with shit like this.

The pilot episode, about a prophecy-obsessed killer who passes judgment on prostitutes, strippers and other sinners, remains one of the scariest, coolest things ever shown on TV.  The grimy shots of a seedy, decaying city framed by perpetually rainy exteriors was television for kids raised on Doom, Se7en and Nine Inch Nails.  In it, Frank combines a preternatural profiling ability (he can “see what the killer sees,” though he asserts that he’s not psychic) with old fashioned detective work and a deep knowledge of prophetic hokum to find the killer.  There’s a surprising amount of action and a healthy serving of blood and gore.  It rocks.  But with a tighter budget and faster shooting schedule the series had difficulty sustaining what the pilot had established.  Many episodes struggle to find their voice.

Some of Millennium‘s problems come from the ways it tried to set itself apart from The X-Files. For one thing, there were no funny episodes (in the first season at least), but more dangerously, they gave the main character a life.

Oh wait, that's Roy Scheider.

While all we know about Agent Mulder revolves around porno, Frank Black is a family man with a wife and child.  He even has real, non-phone-sex-related friends.  Friend and family time in Millennium is usually a drag though, and Frank’s conversations with his amazingly supportive wife seem like bland filler compared to Mulder and Scully’s semi-flirty argue-fests.  Frank’s wife was even given her own episode, an emo mope-athon about child molestation that’s easily the worst thing in the first season.

There are still plenty of episodes that managed to translate The X-Files’ monster-of-the-week formula into a non-supernatural killer-of-the-week show.  My favorite is “Broken World,” where Frank teams up with a plucky female veterinarian (who just happens to be a redhead…) to stop a slaughterhouse worker who’s switched from killing horses to people.  Unfortunately, instead of cranking out more episodes like this one, by season’s end the show switched to supernatural storylines and heavy handed, make-it-up-as-you-go-along mythologies.  Millennium was doomed to the same fate as X-Files.

That's him, right? Okay good.

More and more supernatural eschatological bullshit crept into Millennium until the show was unceremoniously dumped at the end of its third season.  The ersatz series finale can be found jammed into a boring, late season X-Files about New Year’s Eve, 1999 where Mulder tracks down Frank for some reason or another.  Whatever.

What makes the apocalypse mythology episodes of Millennium so frustrating (aside from being generally crappy) is that, you know, the apocalypse didn’t happen.  It was all bullshit.  When the Millennium Group (the nerdy Phoenix Foundation sans duct tape to which Frank belongs) talks about fighting the “rising violence in society,” I can’t help but laugh.  Remember World War II?  On average, fewer and fewer people have died per year since that shit ended.  Gah, whatever.  This was still a cool show.  Maybe I’m just still bitter about that New Year’s party.

Before I go, I want to clear up something I may have implied in a previous post.  I love Lance Henriksen.  I love that he stars in a billion damn movies a year.  He was the sole redeeming factor of Alien vs. Predator, and I hope that if they ever make a movie out of Aliens vs. Predator vs. Terminator they find a way to cram him in it.  I don’t care if he comes back as Bishop, Weyland or Detective Hal Vukovich.  Put him in the damn thing and it will be awesome.

Alright, this is my first post. Let’s get started with the review.

Recently I started and finished playing Resident Evil 4 for the PS2. I picked this game up a few years ago but I hadn’t played it until just recently because I kept getting sidetracked. Then the release of Resident Evil 5 got my ass in gear, cause it wouldn’t be much fun to play RE5 without knowing the story of RE4. The Resident Evil series is one of my favorite groups of games and RE4 did not disappoint, as I will now describe.

So, the game starts out and you are once again playing as Leon S. Kennedy (remember him from RE2). Leon is hired by some government high-ups to rescue the president’s daughter, Ashley, from some wacko cult in Europe. And, of course, just like in RE2, Leon gets more than he bargained for in this mission. He travels to a town where Ashley is suspected to be and discovers that all of the town’s people are crazy zombie-like abominations. (Notice I said the people are zombie-like and not zombies.) That’s right, the town hasn’t been infected by the T-virus or the G-virus but instead it’s been affected by an ancient parasite called “Las Plagas”. It’s a fight for your life as you battle an entire town of monsters!

“Just like old times in Raccoon City”

Now, to get it out of the way, here’s an overview of the whole game in a nutshell (*HUGE SPOILERS AHEAD!*): Leon runs all over the damn place collecting weapons and fighting crazy-ass monsters, finds Ashley and loses her and finds her and loses her and finds her ( I really can’t remember/don’t really care how many times this happens), meets an ally named Luis ( he dies), runs across opposition consisting of Saddler and his cronies, we see some blasts from the past in Jack Krauser and Ada Wong (more RE2 references!) and finally Leon destroys Saddler and saves Ashley. Ada escapes as well and with a sample of the parasite for……*drum roll*……Albert Wesker! Yeah, that’s right, Wesker makes an appearance in RE4. He is pretty much the main villain of the entire series after all. And with that out of the way we can focus on the finer details.

Resident Evil 4 is different in many ways from its predecessors. First off is the view of the game. RE4 takes the camera perspective of an “over the shoulder” view rather than looking down from above the character. This was a little tough to adjust to but you get the hang of it real quick. It has some nice benefits, too. You can see what’s coming ahead of you and you can aim your gun to a specific location on the enemy with the help of a laser sight (which is built in on every gun). I also can’t forget the button prompts; these usually happen in cut scenes and if you don’t press L1+R1 or X+Square fast enough your dead. The second difference is the enemies. As I stated before the enemies aren’t zombies but crazed parasite infected lunatics that speak Spanish (I didn’t mention the Spanish part before, but yeah, they speak Spanish). This might have some hardcore RE fans in a frenzy saying “WHAT!?! They’re not zombies!” but it doesn’t really change the game play too much. Another difference is the concept of collecting money to trade with The Merchant. Throughout the game you pick up money here and there and then when you find The Merchant you can buy guns and other nick-nacks from him. I found the Merchant’s voice hilarious and the fact that he always greats you as “Stranger”. (The name’s Leon motherfucker! LEON!!!). Also, there are no ink ribbons in this game. If you find a typewriter you can just save and that’s that. The ink ribbons can stay gone for all I care; I hated carrying around those annoying pieces of shit anyway.

Annoying pieces of shit

There are things that stayed that same, too. Leon starts the game with the standard knife and handgun. And as the game progresses you can obtain new and more powerful weapons. You can get handguns, shotguns, riffles, machine guns, magnums, rocket launchers, mine throwers, grenades, and even eggs. (Eggs restore your health but you can also chuck them at people, hilarious). And you can upgrade your weapons as well to make them more effective. Also, the healing herbs make an appearance again. There’s the green herb, the red herb and the yellow herb. The yellow herb is new and it increases your max health.

I liked the variety of enemies they had in this game. The infected town’s people, the wolf-dogs, giant insects, etc… (some more durable than others of course). And they weren’t impossible to kill or anything. Although, pretty early on in the game you encounter the chainsaw wielding bag head dude and he can be a pain in the ass. And somehow I feel like I’ve seen an enemy like this before…

There are also some enjoyable sub-boss fights with huge enemies. There are these giant monsters appropriately called “El Gigante” that you fight a few times and you also fight a giant mutated gator/croc while in a boat. And it seems some former enemies have taken a change for the better. The crows that normally peck you to death in other RE games will give you money/bullets if you shoot them down.

I can’t really find anything majorly wrong with this game. The only thing that can get annoying is Ashley. Having to protect her stupid-ass can get frustrating. Also, she’ll occasionally call you a pervert. (Is that anyway to treat your rescuer?). Not to mention her voice when she calls for help. “Leon! HEELLLPPP!”, “Help me Leon”, “HEEELLLPPP!”, “Where are you going?!?” (BITCH, I’M TRYIN’ TO SAVE YOUR ASS! SHUT THE FUCK UP!) But yeah, that’s really the only thing to complain about.

“Go ahead and take her.”

Also, there are some extras on this game. If you beat the game you get another outfit and additional weapons which is common in RE games. And in addition to the regular game you can play Assignment Ada and Separate Ways. I’m not going into them so just play the game and check them out yourself.

Ok, I hope I didn’t make this too long. I really liked Resident Evil 4. It had a decent story, it made some connections to the past Resident Evil games, the challenge wasn’t too hard or too easy, and it wasn’t agonizingly long or disappointingly short. The graphics weren’t too shabby either. I’ve heard the GameCube version looks better, but I thought the PS2 version was perfectly fine. If you’re a fan of Resident Evil games and you haven’t picked this one up yet, I would strongly suggest you get on it and play it. I expect high quality when I play a Resident Evil title and Capcom didn’t let me down. This game ruled.

-Super Joe

Well, I had some really ambitious reviews in the works, but those will have to wait. They’ll have to wait because I’m a lazy mutha fucka. That’s right. I said I’m a lazy mutha fucka.

You know who else is a lazy mutha fucka?

Sam Lee.

Only he’s not a lazy mutha fucka the way I’m a lazy mutha fucka, because on top of once being in a successful Cantonese hip hop band known as LMF, he’s also a terrific actor, who back in 1998 starred in a taut and comedic little Dawn of the Dead rip-off known as Bio-Zombie, which was sent to the states with much love from China’s then only Democratic hold-out, Hong Kong. Hong Kong incidentally is, I imagine, the only place in China where a shopping mall could be considered a realistic setting for a zombie movie. You know, because anywhere else in China, for political/economic reasons, it would be totally un-kosher to let zombies in a shopping mall. GO USA!!!

I love Sam Lee, and not just because his name coincidentally fuses the names of two of my ex girlfriends, making it sorta awkward for me to ever talk about him, but also because he’s smooth as goddamn honey drippin’ down a bee’s behind. And not just any bee. A fucking CRAZY BEE!!!

The first copy of this movie I ever owned was a bootleg of the laserdisc or maybe VCD. Either way, it was two sided and during the bootlegging process of the first side something went wrong, and both the Mandarin and the Cantonese language tracks played simultaneously. You can not possibly know a more excruciating pain than having to hear this. If you are an honest man and need to use that old chestnut of an excuse not to have sex (headache, duh) and don’t want to be fibbin’ ’bout it, yo, watch Bio-Zombie with both the Cantonese and Mandarin language tracks turned on at once. To continue with the metaphor, it’s like being rough-fucked in the ear continuously for forty-five minutes. Rough-fucked in the ear while crazy people scream at you. A confusing jumble of annoyingly shrill Chinese voices, like a chorus of drills in your skull will cause your brains to be so friggin sore by the end of the movie, you’ll have at least a month long excuse for celibacy. Perhaps your sex-life will dry up completely. I mean, when I was in high school and viewed this movie repeatedly I wasn’t getting any at all, and I think I’m totally allowed to blame this awesome movie for that. Right? Thank you, Bio-Zombie. Back then, all I really wanted was to watch this movie with a hot girl on my birthday. Didn’t happen. I was so sad and lonely. But I had fucking awesome hair, even if it kinda looked like a mullet from a certain angle. Then I turned into a zombie and my best friend had to shoot me.

Oh, shit, no. That’s what happens in Bio-Zombie. And I guess I totally ruined the movie for you now. But seriously, it doesn’t matter if you already know the ending. The movie is full of zombies in a mall, and where the fuck else are you gonna find that? And Sushi Boy! You can’t find Sushi Boy anywhere else.

Actually, I guess I did find one at LAX.

Anyway, where was I? After I got fed up with the VHS bootleg and when that newfangled internet thing started giving me the opportunity to steal movies via file-sharing software, I upgraded my copy yet again to an AVI version beautifully ripped from the DVD and compressed in stunning DIVX quality. I did have to do a bit of searching to find the subtitle file so that I could understand the (thank the Lord! single track of) Chinese language audio. I burned the thing to a nice 700mb Memorex CD-R and placed it affectionately in my CD library. Minor problem: The subtitle file was accidentally left out of the burning process, but that was alright. I just kept it on my computer for when I needed it. (The thing was like 65 Kbs). But it was worth that small amount of space to read such verbal gems as “So big the balls!”

Oh, but then my hard drive died and I lost the file.

My next attempt to upgrade my copy was about a year ago. A good friend of mine purchased the DVD. Score! I’m gonna copy that shit right onto a shiny new Memorex DVR! So I grab the box out of his bookshelf, bring it on home, pop that sucker open, and . . . Oh, shit the disc isn’t there. I call my friend up, and he’s at a loss. No pun intended.

Fast forward to today. I wanna write a review of this, the only movie that fills all three categories of being my favorite Hong Kong movie, my favorite Sam Lee movie, and my favorite movie featuring Sushi Boy. I still got that CD-R of the DIVX version. Problem is my computer is some kinda stupid piece of shit, and Windows won’t let me view thumbnails of, click on, or attempt to open any AVI files whatsoever. (If anybody has a fix for this, let me know.) So, as I write, I’m converting back to DVD the DIVX that was ripped from the original DVD. When it’s done, I can watch it, re-rip it, and then convert stills from the MPEG2 file to JPG files to pretty up this here little review.

Anyway, here is said review:

Some Chinese Mafioso type dudes are testing out some bio-chem war shit that turns people into zombies. They store it in a soft drink bottle. Which is totally an awesome idea, dude. Then shit happens, everybody dies, and some fucker runs away with the bottle. Two ne’er-do-well punks named Crazy Bee and Woody Invincible accidentally run the fucker down with their car and when he mumbles “soft drink” with his last ounce of strength, they think he wants to drink the shit and not warn them that it’s toxic zombie juice that will turn the entire world into a hell of the living dead Dawn of the Dead rip-off come to life. So they pour the swill down his gullet, he gurgles, dies, and then Woody and Bee do the logical thing: They lock him up in their trunk and head to work at their VCD store in the local shopping mall.

More shit happens, then zombies happen, then finally awesomeness happens. Really, this movie is fucking great. And you probably hear me say that about a lot of movies. And maybe most of them you don’t think are fucking great. But I swear you should believe me when it comes to this one. It’s the best, and I mean best, Hong Kong zombie movie you’ll ever see. The jokes are, well, at least as good as the ones I’ve been making in the course of this review, and what they lack in quality they make up for in quantity. Like a good piece of blogging douche-bloggery, the script of Bio-Zombie tries to force something stupid and interesting into every second in order to keep you paying attention to the movie and not reaching for that porn VCD. Cause even a bad this joke is better than no joke if it keeps you from whackin’ the monkey.

So anyway, I could write more about this movie. I really could. There’s a lot of memorable scenes, lines, and gags. But writing about all that would take a lot of work, and when you get right down to it, it’s like I said: I’m just an LMF, man. Lazy Mutha Fucka.

And so you’re totally SOL.

TTYL
– Jason Deadcat

Sam Lee image stolen from this place: http://mehitobel.com/licansen/
Other images stolen from I forget where.

Odds of being the final girl increase with squinting.

Harper’s Island, CBS’s high-concept, imagination-free slasher series premiered tonight.  Now, I don’t mind dumb slashers, but this show was a chore.  After 40 minutes of tedious backstory and bland melodrama, the show managed to squeeze in a measly 2 minutes of cat scares and 30 seconds of actual slashing.  All of this was without any of the gore, nudity or swear words that make real slashers fun.

Maybe things will pick up after the premiere, but Harper’s seems content to follow the Heroes model of constant cliffhangers and abundant schlock.  Luckily, we’ve been promised the show will end after 13 episodes.

This week’s AVQ&A is “What movie/TV show/album/whatever would you like to be able to see/hear again for the first time?” There’s the usual smattering of the slightly pretentious and the heart-warmingly sweet, but no one gave my answer. So I’m going to rectify that.

The X-Files. Stay with me now.

It’s the mid-90s and I’m 14 or 15 years old. I’ve got really long, scraggly hair, big ‘ol round glasses, and the requisite acne. I’m also one of the good kids, who reads a lot, avoids all mentions of sex and sin, is really into science, and implicitly trusts all authority figures. My sister and I are two years apart (she’s the younger one) and we’ve never really gotten along. Until.

Until one weekend my sister stayed with our grandparents because our folks were out of town (I think I was with them, and thus missed out on this experience) and came home talking about this new show she’d seen. We didn’t have cable growing up – my dad still doesn’t. Hi, Dad! – but our grandparents did. So she saw the episode “Excelsis Dei” of some FOX show called The X-Files and was hooked. And she hooked me. She hooked me good.

Our grandmother would tape the episodes for us as they aired and we’d be chomping at the bit to go visit grandma and pick up our tapes every few weeks. But in the meantime, there was the internet to keep us entertained. This was back in the heady days of the 90s personal website extravaganza, when everyone had a Geocities or Anglefire page, joke sites were abundant, and I got caught by my English teacher with a printed copy of that “Pooh Goes Apeshit” story. And so we made a website. It’s still there. Well, bits of it are. [Ok, here --- check out the “Signs You’re In X-Files Withdrawal” list that we made. “Three words: Eat. More. Chicken.” Ha ha! Remember that one, guys? Guys?]

No? Ok, moving on.

So it isn’t just the experience of being new to the show that I would love to go through all over again, but also the sensory overload that came with being new to the internet. I didn’t just stumble onto a new and fascinating television show, I was suddenly a member of a community that wasn’t based on geographical location but instead on a shared experience. There were lots of people watching this show! Men, women, teenagers, and grown-ups. And we could communicate with them! It’s a sense of camaraderie that is taken for granted now – this kinship with people you’ve never met over an issue, event, or subject that is (in your group’s opinion) outside of the mainstream. It’s so Web 2.0. We weren’t weirdos for squealing when Mulder and Scully danced at the end of “Post-Modern Prometheus” – lots of other people did the same thing! And then some of them wrote hair-curlingly bad fan fiction about it.

That isn’t to say that the internet community experience trumps the value of the show in my mind. I most definitely do not want to write terrible PG-rated fan fiction again; but I would like to go back to the show and encounter it with an open, adolescent mind that is wholeheartedly in love with everything it sees. These days, I am — as most of us are — a tough audience to please. I expect not only good writing, but good acting, camera movement that isn’t disorienting, and sets and clothing that aren’t totally distracting. The X-Files only gets these right some of the time. The writing? Sometimes not so good, especially in the last few seasons. The whole thing with baby (super-soldier-hybrid-alien-love-child) William was pretty ridiculous. I wasn’t overly fond of Agent Reyes as a character. Mulder really was kind of a dick, wasn’t he? The Lone Gunmen spin-off was superfluous and just not very good. Scully had some really unfortunate pants suits and hair in the early seasons (tapered legs look good on no one). And the mythology is so convoluted that there’s really nothing left to do but laugh at it.

Hi, I’m Samantha Mulder! You may remember me from such storylines as “Help! I’m an Alien-Human Hybrid Clone!" And "Daddy Smokes Morleys."

That said, there is still a lot to love. I find the Gunmen to still be likable and admirable characters even after that spin-off nonsense. Mulder’s porn habit was somehow endearing and not creepy. Baby William was pretty adorable as far as babies go. Skinner was the best boss anyone could hope for (except when he wasn’t). That basement office was pretty damn cool. The storyline with Scully’s cancer was heartbreaking and felt very real. The weekly bit-parts were consistently well-acted and well-cast. “Small Potatoes,” “Bad Blood,” and “Triangle” all had excellent writing. And the relationship between Moose and Squirrel? Someday I will stop hoping for a relationship like that one, but that day has yet to come.

It's not that I don't love you, honey. It's just that you've never flown to Antarctica to rescue me from a secret government laboratory/spaceship. You understand, right?

This show helped me through high school in the way that D&D, Jesus, and alcohol helped other kids. The X-Files gave me a smart and independent female scientist to idolize – one of the first female television characters I can think of who was intelligent, opinionated, and methodical without being cold and bitchy (although that was the rumor ’round the FBI). It was built on science, pseudo-science, and the things we have yet to learn about our world, which I find to be endearingly optimistic. It questioned, teased, commiserated with, and respected its viewers – at least, until the last season or so. It injected teenage me with a healthy dose of cynicism, for which I will always be grateful. And to top it off, it was really fucking weird. I could write so many reviews for so many episodes just because they are really, very odd. Remember the humanoid tapeworm who lived in sewage? Or the inbred, incestuous family with the dismembered, toothless mother? Good times, all of them.

So here’s to oddity, cynicism, and paranoia. Trust no one. Deny everything. Deceive, inveigle, and obfuscate. The truth is out there, guys.

(Fight the Future screen cap from http://www.inadream-moviecaps.com/)

I could go for some pee sex right about now.

The story follows tough, super cool teenager Genji, whose Yakuza boss father has promised him the reins to the family business.  There’s just one condition: first Genji has to conquer the notoriously violent Suzuran Boys’ School.  And by “conquer,” I mean “beat the shit out of”.  Along the way, Genji befriends second-rate Yakuza loser Ken, whose miserable, by-gone youth (he also tried to “conquer” the school but failed miserably) causes him to live vicariously through the teen, even though he’s a member of a rival crime syndicate.  There’s also some bullshit about a kidnapped girlfriend and a sick friend who needs an operation, but whatever.  We’re all just here to see a bunch of dudes wail on each other, right?

Somewhere on Earth, these haircuts exist.

As I alluded to earlier, this movie definitely has the feel of a 16-bit brawler.  The boys get beaten up in a wave of blood, spit, and sweat, then magically reappear in the next scene with only a band-aid or two for their efforts.  No one dies in Crows. I could almost go all PTA and say that this idealized and glorified violence for violence’s sake is actually more disturbing than what’s in Ichi the Killer, but Miike takes care to let us know it’s all in good fun.  He never misses a chance to skewer overblown Japanese juvenile machismo, from showing Genji’s chief rival Serizawa’s child-like antics to exposing (figuratively) the premature ejaculation that plagues the face-scarred bad ass Makise.  Even the humorless, preternaturally cool Genji gets a reality check when his final rival, [SPOILER] the invincible (and seven foot tall) Rinda-man, lectures Genji on the folly of conquest and the impermanence of all things… right before Genji launches a flying kick to Rinda-man’s head.

Shoulda seen the other guy.

If you’re wondering where the adults are in all of this, don’t.  Japan suffers from a severe lack of teachers, and there appear to be no teachers at all at Suzuran.  I suppose it’s possible that, by some astronomical coincidence, the only significant events in these boys’ lives occur during unsupervised study halls, and all boring scenes of home ec and shop class have simply been cut for your convenience.  Also, as you may have noticed from the pictures, Suzuran is covered in graffiti, so maybe the boys are all just enrolled in the same po-mo urban art independent study.  Still, I can’t help but wonder what Tom Berenger could do with these bastards.

GRADE: B