Devil's guide to the movies - Resident Evil : Extinction

This post will mark the first time that I will put my evil thoughts into reviewing movies. In my crappy reviews, there will be numerous references to parts of the movie, and thus, you are advised to skip my BS if you actually plan to watch the movie. Why is that so? You are almost guaranteed to watch the movie in a completely different light !

The first victim for my sadistic review is the movie based on a video game, Resident Evil (3) : Extinction. While most game based movies are a load of crap, this zombie flick is actually very nice to watch. While the 28 days/weeks later series took a more serious approach to zombies, Resident Evil takes the action-chick-kickass approach. It does help when the female lead is played by Milla Jovovich as Alice. The director did know his job well. There were plenty of scenes with her naked, scenes showing off her tummy and legs while ignoring her obviously flat chest.

Her character in Ultraviolet was simply a serial killer with a strange dose of motherly instinct but in the Resident Evil series, she became a serial zombie and human killer.

So what's new in this installment ? Every new zombie movie always introduces something new. This time round, we have ...

1. Zombie crows (Zombie dogs aren't new anymore)
2. Intelligent zombies, who can run, climb and have increased strength
3. Super zombie with regenerating powers, telekinesis powers and extended reach (Tyrant)
4. Human survivors who preys on other survivors
5. Zombies don't really need to eat, it's just an instinct (WTF?!)
6. The T-Virus can somehow dry up the earth, turning it into a desert
7. You can install a camera in a human and watch it as a satellite feed in high quality and frame rate (imagine the naughty applications of this technology!)
   

Apparently, jumping is a very important move in the movie. Alice and her clones jumped out of trouble so many times over in the movie that it's better than running or shooting.

Obviously, Milla Jovovich isn't a cheap actress to employ. And to get her to sign her up for the 3rd installment of a successful franchise must have really stretched the movie budget to its limits. How do I tell ? The Umbrella's US massive underground desert base is mostly represented in the form of wire frame models and in the scene where Alice cuddles up her newly released clone, the director couldn't find enough budget for a full CGI Alice and had to resort to using the classic camera trick that shows each Alice's face turn by turn. Only when the two Alices are separated, you can see both Alices' faces which can be accomplished by overlapping scenes, another all time favorite director's trick.

There was also a incredible scene where Claire Redfield drove a oil tanker into a whole load of zombies, ignite some dynamites, a cigarette and blew himself in true martyrdom fashion (also known as suicide bomber in most parts of the world). The oil tanker exploded with a big fireball and soon, I realised that it was physically impossible to do so. Just a few scenes ago, Chase was telling everyone that they had only enough fuel in the tanker to drive a hundred miles, which is hardly enough fuel to start a campfire. So I concluded that the aging oil tanker is made of C4 explosives.

At the start of the movie, I was wondering very hard how the Umbrella guys could bare to let so many Alice clones die without doing the manly THING. Hey ! This is a world where most people had turned into zombies, females are in seriously short supply, and babes are very hard to pass up indeed. Are they all gays? In the entire movie, I didn't remember seeing any female members of the Umbrella.

Add a evil twist to the movie logic to their cloning capabilities, it would have been even better ! You see, Umbrella can clone humans. Alice's genetic information can potentially give a cure because her blood can bond with the T-Virus, so hence I can deduce that her off springs will have a 50-50 chance of having immunity too right ? So with so many Alice clones, Umbrella could have started a "reproduction line", and have fun doing it !!!

Ok, that didn't happen of course. Alice was last showed releasing her own personal massive clone army from the cloning facility, showing that not only Darth Vader or Emperor Palpatine could lead a clone army.

It's a great movie to catch, and it probably earned it's NC18 rating from Millia Jovovich's semi naked scenes than the gore from the dying humans and zombies combined. It will probably undergo plenty of cuts before it arrived in DVD and blueray formats, so watch it on the silver screen before it's gone.

Crazy Ang Mo

I haven't write about food for quite sometime. It's not that I am on a diet of instant mee and hence, have nothing to write about. The reality is that I am drowning in work and studies. Now that I ran out of raids to sign up in WoW, I shall share with whoever actually read this blog on a new stall that I have tried with Jia Lun this Tuesday.

Jia Lun first sighted this western food stall online on a forum. It's a hawker stall at Bishan block 272 appropriately named "Crazy Ang Mo". True to it's name sake, it's run by a Australia chap who really knew how to make sales.

For those who are familiar with Botak Jones stall (American), it's the same concept. Basically it's a Caucasian guy fronting a western food stall with locals cooking at the back. The menu was so what similar to Botak Jones. It has mostly burgers, steak, pork chop, and chicken wings. It didn't have soup, but it has pasta, and deserts. The stall owner certainly knew how to be use catchy names for his menu which contains names starting with Ang Mo this and Ang Mo that. Prices is reasonable and affordable.

Taking my first look at his stall, it is certainly well equipped for big business. It has a large LED display showing the queue number, which however, wasn't in use then. Instead, he opted to use his megaphone to broadcast the current queue number being served.

Just a warning to all of you. This guy is a real smooth talker. He will talk people into waiting 30 minutes for their food, upgrading their 80 cents soft serve into a $2.50(?) sundae and changing a "can-be-found-everywhere-in-singapore" pasta to a steak.

I was also one of the big sucker who fell of it. We placed our orders despite his friendly advisory on the waiting time. The ruse of trying out western food sold at a heartland HDB estate at reasonable prices is very appealing indeed. So after paying for our order, we went back to the carpark and put up another hour of parking coupon to ward of the Cisco parking wardens who are insanely active these days.

Things didn't turned out very well for me. We went groceries shopping at Ang Mo, a local supermart, at block 297 and I ended up spending $30 on junk food and instant mee. If not for the 30 min time limit, I could have done even more damage to my wallet. The $90 that I have withdrawn the day before was down to a few red notes already.

Well the 30 minutes estimated waiting time came to about 45 minutes in the end. We order the deluxe version of their burger meal which is a beef burger with a piece of bacon and a slice of pineapple covered in melted cheese. The burger was served with fries. The presentation was eh, just the burger and fries, and it tasted nothing spectacular. The beef patty used was not as good as the Botak Jones version and the food was generally slightly warm, not the piping hot that we were expecting to see for freshing cooked food.

The verdict is, you don't have to come specially to try it out. It's just reasonably priced western food fronted by an Australian guy, cooked by Asian staff, which has a terribly long waiting time on a Tuesday dinner time and didn't look or taste special.

Woah, after writing all this, I really felt that I could have used a few photos which I should have taken during the meal. Felt so weird to be reviewing a food stall without Ang Kong.

Anti-Ang Mo Weirdo on the loose

On my way to work, I have to walk through a bridge linking Harbourfront centre to Harbourfront tower 1. This morning, as I was walking behind a Ang Mo towards tower I, and a dirty and shabby looking 35+ chinese came towards us in the opposite direction. He diverted from his path and came walking towards the Ang Mo.

Guess what, there were no other people on the bridge and this guy just have to came chest to chest with the Ang Mo and snorted really loudly ! That was unbelievably rude ! I was a good 3 metres behind and still hear the sick sounding snorts.

That was a WTF moment. The Ang Mo appeared stunned at his weird behaviour and stood rooted for a second. He turned around, raised his voice at the bloody rude bastard asking what is his problem.

My evil senses alert me of a possible showdown so I decided to hang around for a while longer to kay-po kay-po, hoping for a chance to see a fist fight between the two to start my day. Well you know the saying, happiness must be built on someone else sorrow, and what's the chance of watching a chinese guy fighting against a Ang Mo ? Will it be Bruce Lee style ending where a chinese guy can hum-dum a Ang Mo to tears?

No !!! That was not to be. The chinese guy turned around, and looked at the Ang Mo with a confused look, obviously unable to comprehend the Ang Mo's words or maybe even the situation. I couldn't tell if he did it on purpose but the Ang Mo decided to let it go. My adrenaline fix was denied by the ball-less Ang Mo. So I continue my way back to the office to start another boring day.

The boring day was given a glimpse of hope when my colleague told me that there was a group 2 winner who bought a system 7 Toto ticket at the outlet at Seah Inn market. That's 60k !!! I bought a system 7 ticket there !

And so I took out my ticket from my wallet, cross my fingers and started matching the ticket I have bought. The first 2 numbers matched ! That's so exciting ! And then ......

Obviously I didn't win. I will never be so dumb to announce a big win on my blog. I will go nuts from the attention generated...you know the abalone porridge thingy I always joke about. My bad luck continued as usual, and the ticket of hope became a piece of paper reminding me of my jinxed luck.