A note for those planning to read this entry – written below is nothing Alien movie fans do not already know, so most of you might want to spare yourself some useless reading. I'm only writing it for myself since I have nowhere else to post my own ramblings.

To start off, I must say that there is really no other fictional creature that is both as intimidating and awesomely cool at the same time as the Xenomorph from the Alien movies. Big loves, hugs and cheers to H.R. Giger for designing the most ingenious fictional being ever.

Reason why I'm so fascinated about the aliens lately is cos I've been watching the Alien movie series the past one week. Mind you, like most others I've seen them since I was a kid, but I've only seen bits and pieces and remember very few scenes. Most of all, I don't remember seeing the very first Alien movie made in 1979, so I decided to download and watch it, along with Alien 2 and 3.

The regular and typical Xenomorphs have a physical structure not all too different from a human, mostly because it takes on the characteristics of its host. And since most of the hosts/victims are humans, they typically take on a more humanoid form, the major differences being the addition of a bladed tail and a very horizontally long head with no eyes. I particularly find it intriguing that it has no eyes, but even without them you can totally feel it when they 'stare' at you. Damn exciting. XD!!

These creatures are practically nature's ultimate bio-weapon. Their entire body is a lethal weapon by itself. It's so deadly I can't think of a practical way to kill them without killing yourself in the process. First, the aliens are extremely agile and fast. They can run on twos or fours and crawl quickly through any duct, tunnel and hole. They have also no problems maneuvering in water as shown in Alien Resurrection. Second, they have a 'tongue' capable of impaling any bone and metal; this is how they kill their victims for the most part. They also have a razor bladed tail that does the same job as the tongue, only way bigger, longer and stronger. Third, they have concentrated acid blood that melts and dissolves virtually everything but its own hide. This is, in my opinion, the alien's most lethal weapon. It discourages enemies from trying to kill it, and at the same time it can use it to break in and out of most confinements (if not all), and even to handicap/kill enemies. If you shoot at it too close, the blood that bursts out may kill you. Sweeeet....

Xenomorphs are also highly intelligent. Unlike humans and predators, they may not create and use technology since they're more primal, but they are smart enough to know how to observe, learn and adapt. A good example is when the alien queen in Alien 2 followed Ripley and came up using the elevator. I find it funny and adorable to think that this giant alien queen pressed the up button, then patiently waited in the elevator as it slowly brought her to the right floor. XD

Another display of intelligence would be in Alien 3 when the people were trying to lure the alien into a particular corridor so they could release some fluid (I forgot what) and flush it out somewhere. There was a dead man near the exit of the corridor and the alien was right at the exit. Obviously, it wanted to grab the dead body from the corridor but it noticed Ripley and another guy staring at it. It was hesitant for a moment, but then quickly it grabbed the dead man and backed into the exit just as Ripley tried to flood the corridor. It was so fun. XD

Now as I previously mentioned, Xenomorphs can easily travel through ducts and the sort, which they use cleverly for sneaking, hiding and stealth hunting. Think of them as ninjas of the alien world. They are highly capable of surprise attacks and sneaking up on people any time. Damn-ness man! ^_^

The one thing I'm still not sure about aliens is… their purpose in life. Just what is the point of killing everything they see that moves? You might think that oh, they kill for food, duh! But no, I am more than certain they don't always kill for food. How often is it that you actually see them EAT their victim? In Alien 3, the alien does eat them, but not exactly. It will kill one person, grab a few bites just for the gore, sees the next living person 10 seconds later and goes for it, rinse and repeat.

Since a lot of death scenes are obscured, it's usually quite hard to tell if the alien actually does eat them, but the impression I strongly get is that they don't. They just kill. So, assuming they only live to kill, and perhaps nibble on them when they feel like it, then what happens when there's nothing more to kill (considering the rate at which they kill)? Do they just starve to death? Go into hibernation? >_>" Die and wait for the next batch of victims to arrive? What if the victims never arrive? O_o… Hmm…

I won't go into the alien life cycle cos I mean... it's so straightforward and I assume everyone knows it like the back of their hand… right? Well, those who dunno, smack yourself in the face and go watch the movie series NOW! It's an ORDER!!

I was going to write longer comments (not reviews) for the Alien movies but I got lazy and I don't think I have all too much to say so here is it. Warning though, there're spoilers.

Alien (1979) - A

You don't get to see the alien much in this one and when you do, it's extreme close ups of its face so you don't get to know how the alien really looks like as a whole until the end. There aren't exactly any 'action' scenes with blazing guns and such since the people don't have weapons, so all you see is how they try to get rid of it from the spaceship, though in failure. No other facehugger and chestburster scene from any other Alien movie beats the one in this. If you ask me, I say those scenes are the most disturbing and most impactful in the entire movie (or even series), and also the most unforgettable (in a positive way lol). Despite how long ago this movie was made and the fact that the alien is a man in suit, the alien still looks very convincingly real, especially with the drool. XD This is a MUST-watch for new alien fans!

Aliens (1986) aka Alien 2 - A

Now this is the alien movie to watch if you're looking for 'commando action' against the aliens. This is also the one with the most number of aliens altogether. Personally I think this movie's as good as the first one, only with more action, which is not a bad thing is it? =D However, the moment of Alien 2 has to be the alien queen. This is the first time the queen makes her appearance and she is gorgeous. =) Ripley's battle against her had been engraved in my memory since I was 10; no other human vs alien battle leaves a bigger impression than this. Hail to Ripley and the queen.

Alien3 (1992) – A-

This one has a rather interesting start. Unlike the first 2, this one takes place on earth, not space, and there's only one alien throughout like the first movie. This alien, however, was born out of a dog (theatre release) or ox (special dvd release), hence taking the animal's characteristics and looks different from the common alien born out of a human. Apparently critics say that this movie is disappointing, but I think it's good, though not better than the first two. The characters in this movie have to fight the alien in a very different way since they have absolutely no firearms so it's actually really interesting to see how they defeat the alien not by the usual method of sucking/blowing it out into space.

Alien Resurrection (1997) - ???
Gonna watch it soon XD I saw this many times in the past but it was never from start to end, and since I didn't watch these movies in order when I was young I didn't really understand the story. So I'll come back to this later =)

So okay, this past Saturday I went to Portland with my sister and a friend, Patrick. Whee~~ You guys reading this?! LOL Well, there’s really no detail to talk about yet so I’ll just fast forward a bit. I woke up at 10, left at 10:30 with my sister, picked up Patrick, arrived at Portland around 12:30 or so, ate at Todai (Japanese buffet place). Good food, but the sushi that I liked the most didn’t seem to be served a second time. T__T WRRRY?!?! I also regret not eating more of the tako (the octopus/squid leg tentacle thingy.. yumm!) Oh well... >_>

After eating my sister suggested we go ice-skating. O_o... Dun DUN DUNNN!! That was... yikes. O_o I didn’t really want to do it but er... you know.. o_o’’ I ended up having to. The first 10 minutes was just horrid. Seriously just wanted to vanish and disappear. >_>" The ice was like horror in itself, horror that exceeds even aliens from the alien movies. LOL. (Don't get me wrong though, I love those aliens =D) I seriously couldn’t imagine how the hell people can stand, let alone skate and glide and jump and twirl and stuff, on ice.

Anyway, Patrick and my sis are nice enough to help me all the way through. For the first half hour I couldn’t even move a feet forward without falling, although practically I didn’t fall since I either held onto the railing or Patrick and my sister would grab me back to balance. And in that time, all I did was really er... well, complaining (w00t to nyanyanya and yapping! XD) and ‘skating along’ with them as they practically pulled me along on the ice. O_o. I mean that’s okay you know... until all those 4-8 year old kids skate and zip by like it was nothing. T___T *Bangs own head against the ice floor*

At the end of it, what was tired was my knees. And at the end of the day, it was my arms. O_o I can feel the ‘strain’ on the muscles even today. Why the arms? Cos I was literally using more energy to grab onto Patrick/my sister than to skate. >_>" LOL. But in the end, I guess it wasn’t too bad, knowing that I wasn’t the only one who’s never skated in her life on that rink. XD W00T to first timers!!! Mwahahaha!

After that we went to Uwajimaya and I bought quite some junk for me-self... although my stupid checking account appeared to have zero dollars left so I had to borrow some money from Patrick =_=. Oops. Sorry >_< Heya Patrick, if you happen to be reading this, tell me when we can meet again so I can return you the money okay? >_

Then we ate some Chinese food, came back to Eugene and end of story =) Mission accomplished! (Writing this entry) *Phewz* Oh right, one more shitty thing... I SO FRIGGIN' LOOK FAT!!! *Melts herself with alien blood* AAARRRRGHHHH!!!

Okay, most of you should know that I've been watching a couple movies over the past 2 weeks. I saw most of them in a matter of 3-5 days and I do feel like writing shorter reviews for each of them but since there're a little too many, for this entry I'll just review one of the animated ones. Be assured that there'll be many points in where you'll disagree with me, but er… like I care? LOL. 
 
Happy Feet (2006) – B 
Note: This review is spoiler-less. 

Very often I wonder why it is that movie makers love releasing movies of the same type around the same time. ‘March of the Penguins’ was the first penguin movie to be released, and a few months later, ‘Happy Feet’ followed. For that reason, Happy Feet is inevitably compared with March of the Penguins and well, that’s just not right.  

Let’s look at Happy Feet and review it based on the fact that it’s an animation on penguins, nothing more nothing less. It’s not meant to compete with the purity of a friggin-hard-to-shoot documentary, so any comparison between the two is a no-no. Now, despite it being an animation ‘for kids’, it’s really not for kids. In other words, it should be PG13, not Everyone. 

Reason is, the language used is an issue. Some of the dialogue is ‘mature’, often relating to “sex” and promiscuity. It can be comical to young adults and adults, but kids below 8 years of age are more than likely to not understand a thing. This typically results in boredom and dislike for the movie, but never “trauma” as some parent reviewers claimed.  

Also, those who say this friggin’ movie encourages homosexuality or the sort, please slice your throat. There was only one 5-second scene that was made to be comical that had anything to do with homosexuality and I was laughing my ass off. As I said before, this movie shows a lot of promiscuity. Half the movie is about how penguins do their ‘thing’ so as to find themselves a girl to mate with, and like always, there’s this one female one who’s all popular and wanted, so you see all the boys trying to go after her. Very clearly, these penguins are so straight they own all us straight humans. Exactly how much more homophobic can people be to actually come up with this GAY penguin statement?? This part of the review is brought about from reading some dumbass reviews written by dumbass homophobes on Yahoo Movies.

Next, the animation in this movie is as good as it needs to be. It’s CGI, how much better can it get, really? The textures are good and the animation is smooth, ‘nuff said. I haven’t seen anyone complain about the colors yet but er, in case anyone hasn’t realize, the setting of this movie is South Pole (or North, does it matter?). All the colors you’ll ever see there is white for snow, black for penguins and blue for ocean.  

As for the story, I must say that it’s not the best or anything, but it’s entertaining nevertheless, at least for the first half of the movie. Basically it’s about a penguin who can’t sing and has a ‘defect’ – a habit of tapping its feet, which unfortunately is taken very negatively by the rest of the penguins. These penguins live to eat and mate and repeat. To mate they need to sing; it’s just the way they ‘find their girl’. At the same time, the penguins realize that their food source is growing thin. So the story is about Mumble, the main male penguin character, trying to be accepted by the penguins, going after the girl he likes and finding out who’s taking their food. 

The real entertainment in Happy Feet is with its humor, that is, if you actually find it funny. Like many movies/stories, there’s always the specific character(s) who brings in the comedy.  In the case of Happy Feet, it’s a group of 5 smaller penguins (Adelie penguins), one of which is voiced by Robin Williams (if you like him). They’re Latino-accented and have a wildly outgoing and playful personality. They only appear 1/3 way into the movie and disappear 1/3 way later, but if you love them like I do, they’re most likely to be the reason why you’d review this movie (slightly) positively rather than neutrally.  

The ending is questionable though. It is a happy ending, yet it felt forced and abrupt. I thought it could have been better if more events happen in between before the ending just so there’s a better flow.

I was watching a lot of movies over the past weekend and I saw King Kong just yesterday, and I must say, I have never seen any movie more stupidly RIDICULOUS than this. Now, if you’re planning to watch it, you might not want to read all of this since it’s entirely spoilers (starting next paragraph), but seriously, my advice is, DON’T watch it. This 3 hr movie is just a waste of your time, and money if you actually spent any on it.

Now, I’ve never seen the original back in 1933 but King Kong’s basic story (it is basic) can be summarized into a few words - Kong meets girl, men save girl, Kong is taken to New York, Kong dies. So tell me, how can such a simple straightforward story stretch for over 3 hours? It’s unbelievable how unnecessarily slow paced and longwinded this movie is. It could have been shortened into one and half hours, but no they must extend it to 3 hours! You know, long movies != good movies. I think Peter Jackson is way too drowned in his Lord of the Rings success and forgot that movies aren’t typically 3 hours long. But that’s okay, cos you know what, that’s not anywhere as ridiculous as the real problems in this movie.

This story is about King Kong but you know when Kong actually appears in the movie? He appears after 1+ hour into the movie. One plus hour. So what exactly is the first hour about? It was a boring longwinded telling of how the main female character Ann got hired to play lead actress in a movie by this ambitious movie maker, how they got on board the ship, a 20-30 minute scene on how the ship struggled against the obstacles in the sea upon reaching Skull Island (the main entrée of this movie; Kong’s home) and etc. Even if these were absolutely necessary, trust me, they didn’t have to be that long.

But okay, finally they reached Skull Island. Next thing, the natives on the island appeared and killed half of the movie crew for no good reason. Is Peter Jackson or his writer trying to show that any native from any unexplored land equals ruthless and murderous people? What an insult. Perhaps you’d argue that they’re scared of these people trespassing their land, hence killing them first for self-defense. But honey, NO. That is just NOT enough reason.

Anyway, the remaining movie crew managed to survive cos now the ship crew came to rescue, then went back to the ship but Ann got kidnapped by the natives back to the island and offered her as some sort of ‘sacrifice’ to Kong. Okay... what? Why? What is Kong to these people? A god? A devil? Okay, maybe it doesn’t matter, but why do they have to offer a human, also a female, to it? For Kong to eat? (A human ain’t filling for a beast that huge btw) For Kong to ‘play’ with? (Gorilla’s got some human fetish?) I guess they don’t need a reason eh - just find a way to hand the girl over to Kong, period.

Now here comes the best parts. Ann had her arms roped to 2 poles when she was served to Kong. Kong grabbed her with a hand and practically yanked her off the poles. Now, am I the only one who finds it surprising that Ann’s arms didn’t break? And oh, there’s more. After grabbing Ann, Kong ran away gorilla style (on 2 feet and all knuckles on both hands) with Ann in one hand. I cringed the entire time, expecting for Ann to be crushed according to the law of er... logic. But no, she was perfectly all right, just somewhat scared. Oh, did I also mention Kong loves to shake her like a pepsi can? Do you know that with that velocity and impact any living creature would have died of all possible reasons?

Back to the other crew, they found out Ann was kidnapped and given to Kong and all of them decided they’d go back to the island to rescue her. What kindhearted people. Anyway, they were only starting to explore the island when OMG. This is one of THE best parts of this movie.

So you see, the crew ended up having to run away from a stampede of brontosauruses who were running away from raptors in this very narrow valley. Not only did some of them outrun the dinosaurs, some just know how to survive running beneath them with their enormous feet missing them 99.9% of the time. But wait, there’s more. The raptors joined the party, running along with the humans under the brontosauruses (they retarded or what?). Let’s not question why the brontosauruses’ feet miss them as well, but dude, the humans know how to ‘fight’ with the raptors while running under the brontosauruses and not getting killed at anytime.

I know this is a fantasy movie, but for the love of god, even a 3 year old knows no friggin’ human can survive that stampede under that extremely ridiculous situation. And no, the stampede scene isn’t over yet.

At some point, the one guy outrunning the entire stampede fired his tommy gun at the brontosaurus behind him and it fell, and the one behind it fell, and the rest followed and fell like they slipped on a banana peel (or dominos, only backwards). These hundred ton beasts fell flat, some rolled, some flew, and it seemed like they landed on the humans but majority of them survived.. and without much of a scratch. O_O... I’m speechless, dumbfounded by the level of illogic in this movie. But auw come on, did you seriously think this’s the end?

In the meanwhile, our girl Ann was running away from Kong himself and a dozen other predators for what it seemed like hours. Well let me tell you what Ann was ‘equipped’ with. She was in her lingerie (two thin layers), no shoes and nothing else. Running around in this prehistoric jungle setting didn’t prove all that hard to her, though every time I watch her run, I cringe in pain anticipating when she’d either step on something that’ll pierce through her feet, fall on something that’ll stab through her, or when she’ll simply break her ankles. But of course, that didn’t happen and our heroine was so incredible she outran a TREX, only to encounter another one and retained her life only thanks to Kong who decided he wants to save his precious toy. By the way, you will never get to see Ann’s lingerie get really dirty, neither her face, make up and hair.

Next battle, Kong Vs Three Trexes. This is the next best thing in the movie. You’ll witness Kong single-handedly fight off THREE Trexes at once, and I mean literally single-handedly. Kong holds Ann in one hand throughout the first third of the battle, swinging and juggling her left and right like Barbie (and she remains alive!) as he tries to keep her away from the hungry Trexes who insist that they eat the human, regardless having found a way better meal - Kong himself.

Eventually, one Trex died and the rest and Kong and Ann fell off a ledge down a valley with a network of thick interlocking vines that broke their fall bit by bit. Not that this is the only case, but this part of the battle is absolutely unnecessary. Overdone CGI and flash is what it solely is. At some point Ann fell off the vine that caught her and landed on the snout of the Trex below her who couldn’t stop struggling. But of course Ann didn’t fall off by any means and later she landed safely on watery grounds even after a 20 feet free fall cos the vine the Trex she was on was hanging from broke.

In any case, the battle dreadfully continued on meaninglessly for another 5 minutes or so and after that Kong brought Ann to his home. His home is up on some highland where you can look down on almost the entire island; somewhere far, just remember this cos we are coming back to this.

On the other side, the men who came to save the girl were facing off man-eating insects of all sorts. Ann’s human interest, Jack, had like 8 giant bugs all over his body and he was trying to get them off for like... 5 minutes. What were the bugs trying to accomplish really? If they were planning to eat him he’d have been dead in 30 seconds but no, they just sort of got on his body and stayed there like they were flirting with the man. But that’s okay, cos what’s coming up next is just plainly ingenious. This young teenager who’s never fired a weapon in his life took out his tommy gun and shot at the bugs on that man who couldn’t stop flailing. Perfect shots. The man was 5000% uninjured. Amen to God. Er, I mean the boy.

Anyway, there were just waaay too many killer insects and the men were almost doomed when some of the remaining ship crew came and rescued them... again. How convenient. After that insane ordeal, everyone just wanted to leave the island ASAP, except for Jack who went on to find Ann on his own even after experiencing half a dozen near death experiences, knowing full well that everything on that island is man-eating.

Remember three paragraphs ago I told you that Kong’s home is somewhere far? You know how long it took Jack to find it? 30 screen seconds. Jack barely just left the other men and all too soon he arrived at Kong’s home without any difficulty. Makes me wonder why things are so much easier when you’re lone in a friggin’ everything-eats-man island.

So I’ll fast forward a bit. Jack tried to rescue the girl but Kong woke up and they were in deep shit, but managed to escape hanging on to a flying bat. For one, you hang onto an angry hungry bat, you’re never gonna see daylight again. For two (?), Ann who was hanging onto Jack who was hanging onto the bat would have fallen considering the way she hung onto him, but since this entire movie is illogical, I’ve come to pretend that didn’t just happen.

I’ll fast forward again. Everyone finally escaped the island, knocked out that giant gorilla along the way and brought him back to New York to turn him into a money making joke. He later broke out of his chains and randomly picked up (literally) blonde women on the streets to look for Ann and tossed them like crumpled paper if it wasn’t. Damn, that part was just hilariously stupid, but hilarious nevertheless.

Since he was wrecking havoc on the streets, Jack decided to make him wreck even more havoc by luring Kong into chasing after him in a taxi. Wadahell was that for? One, no reason - just flash. Two, he wanted to bring Kong to Ann’s workplace so he could find her... ignoring the one hundred cars Kong crashed during the chase.

After that, the movie was just not worth even talking about (I was having fun writing the above review until now). Let’s just say Ann broke my nerve and I finally (why didn’t I think this earlier) wished she’d just die. One last thing that’s a must-mention is that throughout the movie you see Kong in many different sizes. He enlarges and shrinks all the time. Sometimes he looks 30 feet, sometimes 20. At the end when he lay dead on the streets, he looked 15 feet. What’s he? A balloon?

This movie is so ridiculous I couldn’t help but read over 30 reviews (the bad ones). Many of them complain about bestiality between Ann and Kong, but SURPRISE, that’s one thing I don’t actually agree with. I agreed with practically every other single thing they mentioned regarding why the movie is plain suckage but not that Ann and Kong love thingy. Kong has an issue, indeed, but the way I see it Ann is just fascinated by this beast who for some reason cares so much about her. In fact, the entire time I watched that movie I thought Kong was female. That’s how much it didn’t matter to me. O_o

Anyway, conclusion is, if you’re a flash person who wants nothing but flashy CGI (even if it’s overdone and lame) and one unnecessarily long and ridiculous battle scene after another and other absolutely useless scenes and a lame lame ending, this is the movie for you. Otherwise, listen to my advice and stay away from it. King Kong overly relies on their CGI, thinking that all that eye candy action is gonna turn it into the coolest movie ever, but NO, all that eye candy is eye sore. Who are they trying to fool, really? Two year olds?

If you think you’re interested to check out some of those ridiculous fight/action scenes, you can check them out on youtube. If you watch them selectively without watching the entire movie, you might just find it somewhat enjoyable but otherwise, you’d find it boooring right after the brontosaurus stampede like I did. So other than that, really, never touch this movie. It’s a waste of time.

Lastly, congratulations for actually finish reading the longest review I’ve ever written for anything, ever. King Kong definitely won the award for The Most Absurd "Hyped" Movie Ever.

Ai yai yai yai... And so it's a new year... O_o... And I know I'm late but er.. better late than never. Happy New Year~~ ^__^ Is it happy really, though? O_o.. hmm... I dunno. I feel urgh, somewhat, cos' it always reminds me that I'm soon gonna grow one year older... =_= Soon it'll be a day to cry and remorse T__T

I didn't draw a New Year picture this time, but I did draw a random picture of er... you-know-who again a few days ago. Most would have seen it already but er... I still wanna post it here anyway =)

Mwehehehe... I so love to live in my fantasies... *sigh* I'm still waiting for my Samurai 7 game to arrive. I wonder if it will in a few days... I can't wait to see how it's like, even though my guess is that it's gonna suck quite badly... >_>" But hell, I just want to see more of Kyuuzou, and the new "main character" in the game can die for all I care =_=. I seriously rather it be Kirara, cos I really don't want the story of the game to be all cheesy and stuff, although it's most likely gonna be. Argh. Oh well. We'll see.

One more thing... er..... >_>"....... Dante died. And if you're wondering who the hell that is, it's my gerbil, the dark brown one. He either died of sickness (he had tumor) or starvation... (I noticed the food bowl is empty only on Sunday and I haven't looked into the cage for 2 days). Worst thing is, he's not just dead. He's a third eaten. His belly is open, his guts gone, or so it seemed. Could have been Vergil who ate him after he died. It was disgusting but er... I gotta get him out of the cage and dispose of him somehow. I'm feeling bad =_= cos' I feel guilty. Urgh >_<!

I was thinking of how to er... well... dispose of him for a while. I can't bury him since the land outside the apartment doesn't belong to me, and I definitely don't want to throw him in the garbage cos' the garbage truck WILL crush its body into pieces (dude I'm not gonna make myself even more guilty), and flushing him down the toilet is a HELL NO. After a while, I decided that it's best to leave him in a river, and so I did, just this morning before I went to work. There's a river just 10 minutes away and the current was rather strong. I just hope he remains in one piece... or maybe he won't afterall. I can't imagine which animal down the river will grab and eat him... T__T At least, that's still a part of nature. It's still a heck lot better than flushing him down a chute of pee and shit, or get grinded into minced meet with rubbish and shit.

Sigh... and so I have one gerbil left. He's gonna be all lonely for the rest of his life. I wonder if he even knows what it means and how it feels to be lonely. I'm tempted to just free him, but that'll guaruntee his death in within 12 hours. >_>" So... I suppose I just have to keep him. He's 1.5 years old, his time is almost up... soon. But I hope that when he dies, he'd at least die in one piece with no open belly and shit =_=''. May you rest in peace, Dante.