Original anime movie

The upcoming live-action movie

(Source)

I was (and I still am!) a X-Files fan. Without fail, I’d glued in front of the idiot box every week and would not miss a single episode of the paranormal investigations. I was so obsessed with it, I would buy books, magazines, novels and anything that is related to it. I even gave trivias to my schoolmates out of boredom.  Soon, college beckoned and I had to part with my beloved TV for studies hence missing out season 5 and onwards. Since then, I totally lost touch of it

Back to present day. I missed X-Files so much ergo I buy. Simple logic applied. ;D

Ahem. Seriously, it has been more than a decade since the release of the first season and the attempt to download the complete series via torrents or P2Ps are pretty hard to come by. Buying off the shelf from video stores is an expensive investment and they do not come cheap. At the end of the day, I got it off from UK and it’s cheaper. Ordered, paid, waited for 4 days and I got the package.

X-Files marathon here I come.

(The famous “Whoever wins…we lose”)

I went to watch AVP:R with George a couple of days ago. Promised him that I won’t watch the film before him (I did actually, in Japan. Shhh, keep it low).

Started with a big splash and ended with a big bang. It was like watching Alien, Aliens, Alien3, Alien Resurrection and Predator all together in one compilation. I am an Alien fan and immediately I discovered there were so many references from the old Aliens/ Predator movies. I felt the director or writer was really desperate and low on ideas and indirectly plagiarised the previous scripts. Acting was stiff, very little exploration of characters (hey, humans are here to die anyways) and the only part I like is the Predator (note the singular) gets more aliens whacking screen time than the prequel. Let’s not forget one of the cliches: the unnecessary motion sensor signals that they try really hard to slot into this movie too.

Prior to the screening, we had a short run of The House of the Dead 4 at the arcade arena and the machine ate my $2. We asked one of the nearby attendant to dig out the coin and guess what, there was about $5-6 bucks stuck in the machine. Presumely he thought those coins were ours, he pushed some override buttons and gave us 6 credits on the game. Lucky us. House of the Dead 4 was slightly different from the others. Reloading and pushing away approaching zombies is by shaking your arcade gun hard. That game session rewarded me a blister on my finger. Apart from that, killing zombies and clearing the stage is relatively easy but defeating a boss is, um, credit costing. We lost after the second boss but heck, it’s five free continues for a price of one.

I love tokusatsu TV shows, let it be Sentai or Kamen or Ultraman.They offer simple plot yet deep, no catch, no dramas and a satisfying weekly action.Readapting the original Kamen Rider saga would be like re-living the good old days back in the 80s and 90s, this time with more special effects and *ahem* better, cuter chicks in show.

I watched the prequel (Kamen Rider The First, official website) and it was pretty good. The Shocker cyborg ‘monsters’ are more down to earth and glad they took away the annoying screams from the died-from-one-punch soldiers. The story became more dramatic than the simple ‘bad-guys-invade-and-heroes-save-the day’ plot and the costumes are looking way nicer and armoured compared to the days when they used foams and lycra/spandex. With the upcoming sequel Kamen Rider The Next (the title is so obvious nowadays, no more Kamen II or Kamen III) airing during this Fall, they are going to introduce another classic Kamen, the V3.

As usually, fansubbing won’t happen till they release the DVDs, unless you wanna watch cam-rips. I’m predicting that it will be released in the torrents by early April or so next year (read: 2008).

(Obvious title: Kamen Rider The First sequel, The Next!)

(Source)

Here comes Agent 47 stalking the big screen in November this year. Of all the possible stars to cast this hitman but Timothy Olyphant?!

Yippie-ka-yay!

 P.S. He’s been losing hair in every single sequel and he’s totally bald now. Guess the terrorists gave him stress once too often.

Update (14th August 2007): Brucy and Maggie Q are walking Terminators! Cool.

(Source)