Monday, January 31, 2005
The weekend is over, was a wee bit crazy, as I had plans but they kept changing every couple hours because something kept coming up, which resulted in my sleep pattern going totally out of the window, and the weekend flying by really freaking fast. Friday my sis treated my Dad and I to some Chinese food, immediately following that I met up with Carlos and we went and saw that Alone in the Dark. Considering all the previews and hype I saw for the film on tv, there was an extremely disappointing turnout to the opening night's crowd. Only 9 people there, that's freaking sad. I don't see it lasting longer than 2 weeks, which leads to....
Alone in the Dark
Been forever since I've seen something new with Christian Slater in it. He's not the guy to put in charge of narrating the movie either, I just can't take him seriously in this role. I never played the games this film was based off of, but the plot in here goes this archaelogist discovers a gold chest in the ocean, that unleashes a horde of monsters that look like a mixture of armadillos and the aliens from the.....er...Alien movies. Slater is a paranormal investigator who got booted out of some classified government agency. He keeps getting hunt down from powerful humans injected with dna from the creatures throughout the film. There is really nothing state of the art here, the CGI for the creatures are allright, but they don't look as scary as they should be.
As a matter of fact, the movie really isn't all that scary at all. There was a couple times where there was a acceptable amount of suspense built up, but it just teased a scare, and that's pretty much what it did in the whole film. When the inevitable finally came, it practically came from out of nowhere and not the expected kind of nowhere that gives you a good scare ala Lost World, but it really added nothing and made me feel very disappointed. Scare factor is very disappointing. Unlike other horror flicks, they actually tend to follow the story fairly well throughout the film, but there aren't really any huge twists, nor is any of the storytelling all that exciting. Probably the moment I like best which felt awkardly placed in this type of film is a huge battle scene with a hard rock melody in the background that made it seem like an action flick.
Finally this wouldn't be a horror movie if it wasn't for a lame ending with no closure, and Alone in the Dark delivers on that in spades. Ultimately, Alone in the Dark will probably go down as another poor game-to-movie translation. While it did have a couple of promising moments, it came up short too many times. On a brighter note...Terra Reid is in the film as a super-hot geeky scientist :) I cannot go higher than a 3.5/10, which translates too...
3/4
Been playing a lot more Halo 2 online lately, won yet another rumble pit ffa, so huzzah for me. Saturday came and I went bowling with Corey and Carlos. I broke my old high score of 143, my new record is now 153. I got my first ever Turkey in bowling, that game I had 5 strikes and a spare, I should've done a lot better but I had a couple weak follow-up frames. I managed to actually stay somewhat consistent too, bowling a 148, and a 131 in my next two games. Average of 144. My best day ever in bowling. After some bowling we rented some flicks and played some games over at Carlos's place. Monkey Ball 2 has some fucked up mini-games. The specialty lanes in monkey bowling were pretty trippy, same with the golf courses in Monkey golf. We watched Harold & Kumar go to White Castle again. Man, I love this movie, since I didn't see it at the time I originally wrote up the Gruelies it now gets my nod as best comedy of 2004.
Sunday was a pretty good day. It was Royal Rumble day, but due to other circumstances we couldn't catch my third annual ordering of the even until the replay aired. So from about 5-9, Steve, Chris, Joe, and Corey and I killed time playing games. First time I had a big gaming marathon at my place. We did some NBA 2K5 against Rocket online first in which Rocket's Kings demolished our Wolves by a good 35 points. If you havent tried it yet, never play with 4 players on the same team, we all tried to cover the guy who had the ball which left all the players wide open and Richard was nailing 3's on us with ease. We tried Halo 2 then, Corey never played it before, and Steve just sucks at it so that didn't last for too long before moving onto some RAW2. Finally finished off the gaming marathon with 4 player best ball mode in Outlaw Golf 2. It actually resulted in surprisingly fun experience, the wacky antics of the golfers kept things interesting.
After all that fun, it as finally time for the Rumble. I was really pumped up for it, but it kind of felt a little disappointing in the end. Edge/HBK was a technically spectacular match, but it suffered from the lame heel roll-up with tights/rope combo that pisses me off so much and does not deserve to be on PPV. If it had a clean finish it could've easily been a MotY candidate. Casket match was ok for what it was, I was expecting the usual 6-10man run-in to aid Heidenreich in the win as it usually is what happens to Taker at Casket matches in the Rumble ('94 & '98). But a little better than expected to say the least, so huzzah for them. RAW Title match was going good until it looked like Orton got a concussion, I thought it looked legit as he practically wobbled around for the remainder of the match. But from some newsboards it sounds to be a work, but a damn fine performed one.
Surprisingly to say, I actually enjoyed the Smackdown Title match the most. Big Show spearing JBL through the security wall was one hell of a bump that added something special to the match. Didn't mind the ending too, JBL has the belt for this long he may as well carry it into Wrestlemania and drop it there for the ultimate moment. I'd like to see Show beat him in that interesting Cage/Barbwire match at No Way Out, but it'd make more sense to have Cena go over him at Mania for the belt. The way they're booking him now as an unstoppable face ala The Rock is kind of silly right now. I totally did not buy him eliminating Big Viscera and Kane on his own in the Rumble match. Rumble match was allright, nowhere near the awesome one in last year's, I can't believe the announcers didn't make a deal out of Benoit, and after going 60+ minutes again from start to finish he just ended up being a meaningless cannonfodder elimination from Evolution in the end. Good to see Batista win though, gonna be interesting to see how they build up the HHH/Batista match until Wrestlemania.
Shit, I dragged on forever again, that wraps it again for me.
Alone in the Dark
Been forever since I've seen something new with Christian Slater in it. He's not the guy to put in charge of narrating the movie either, I just can't take him seriously in this role. I never played the games this film was based off of, but the plot in here goes this archaelogist discovers a gold chest in the ocean, that unleashes a horde of monsters that look like a mixture of armadillos and the aliens from the.....er...Alien movies. Slater is a paranormal investigator who got booted out of some classified government agency. He keeps getting hunt down from powerful humans injected with dna from the creatures throughout the film. There is really nothing state of the art here, the CGI for the creatures are allright, but they don't look as scary as they should be.
As a matter of fact, the movie really isn't all that scary at all. There was a couple times where there was a acceptable amount of suspense built up, but it just teased a scare, and that's pretty much what it did in the whole film. When the inevitable finally came, it practically came from out of nowhere and not the expected kind of nowhere that gives you a good scare ala Lost World, but it really added nothing and made me feel very disappointed. Scare factor is very disappointing. Unlike other horror flicks, they actually tend to follow the story fairly well throughout the film, but there aren't really any huge twists, nor is any of the storytelling all that exciting. Probably the moment I like best which felt awkardly placed in this type of film is a huge battle scene with a hard rock melody in the background that made it seem like an action flick.
Finally this wouldn't be a horror movie if it wasn't for a lame ending with no closure, and Alone in the Dark delivers on that in spades. Ultimately, Alone in the Dark will probably go down as another poor game-to-movie translation. While it did have a couple of promising moments, it came up short too many times. On a brighter note...Terra Reid is in the film as a super-hot geeky scientist :) I cannot go higher than a 3.5/10, which translates too...
3/4
Been playing a lot more Halo 2 online lately, won yet another rumble pit ffa, so huzzah for me. Saturday came and I went bowling with Corey and Carlos. I broke my old high score of 143, my new record is now 153. I got my first ever Turkey in bowling, that game I had 5 strikes and a spare, I should've done a lot better but I had a couple weak follow-up frames. I managed to actually stay somewhat consistent too, bowling a 148, and a 131 in my next two games. Average of 144. My best day ever in bowling. After some bowling we rented some flicks and played some games over at Carlos's place. Monkey Ball 2 has some fucked up mini-games. The specialty lanes in monkey bowling were pretty trippy, same with the golf courses in Monkey golf. We watched Harold & Kumar go to White Castle again. Man, I love this movie, since I didn't see it at the time I originally wrote up the Gruelies it now gets my nod as best comedy of 2004.
Sunday was a pretty good day. It was Royal Rumble day, but due to other circumstances we couldn't catch my third annual ordering of the even until the replay aired. So from about 5-9, Steve, Chris, Joe, and Corey and I killed time playing games. First time I had a big gaming marathon at my place. We did some NBA 2K5 against Rocket online first in which Rocket's Kings demolished our Wolves by a good 35 points. If you havent tried it yet, never play with 4 players on the same team, we all tried to cover the guy who had the ball which left all the players wide open and Richard was nailing 3's on us with ease. We tried Halo 2 then, Corey never played it before, and Steve just sucks at it so that didn't last for too long before moving onto some RAW2. Finally finished off the gaming marathon with 4 player best ball mode in Outlaw Golf 2. It actually resulted in surprisingly fun experience, the wacky antics of the golfers kept things interesting.
After all that fun, it as finally time for the Rumble. I was really pumped up for it, but it kind of felt a little disappointing in the end. Edge/HBK was a technically spectacular match, but it suffered from the lame heel roll-up with tights/rope combo that pisses me off so much and does not deserve to be on PPV. If it had a clean finish it could've easily been a MotY candidate. Casket match was ok for what it was, I was expecting the usual 6-10man run-in to aid Heidenreich in the win as it usually is what happens to Taker at Casket matches in the Rumble ('94 & '98). But a little better than expected to say the least, so huzzah for them. RAW Title match was going good until it looked like Orton got a concussion, I thought it looked legit as he practically wobbled around for the remainder of the match. But from some newsboards it sounds to be a work, but a damn fine performed one.
Surprisingly to say, I actually enjoyed the Smackdown Title match the most. Big Show spearing JBL through the security wall was one hell of a bump that added something special to the match. Didn't mind the ending too, JBL has the belt for this long he may as well carry it into Wrestlemania and drop it there for the ultimate moment. I'd like to see Show beat him in that interesting Cage/Barbwire match at No Way Out, but it'd make more sense to have Cena go over him at Mania for the belt. The way they're booking him now as an unstoppable face ala The Rock is kind of silly right now. I totally did not buy him eliminating Big Viscera and Kane on his own in the Rumble match. Rumble match was allright, nowhere near the awesome one in last year's, I can't believe the announcers didn't make a deal out of Benoit, and after going 60+ minutes again from start to finish he just ended up being a meaningless cannonfodder elimination from Evolution in the end. Good to see Batista win though, gonna be interesting to see how they build up the HHH/Batista match until Wrestlemania.
Shit, I dragged on forever again, that wraps it again for me.
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