Tag Archives: vampires

Underworld: Awakening

This is a terrible movie, you should definitely watch it if you’re looking for something short, stupid, and loud. Mostly stupid and loud. The first Underworld was stylistic and had a sublime ridiculousness that Director Len Wiseman got away with in large part by using the twin distractions of the always-dependable Bill Nighy as the king of the vampires, and Kate Beckinsale in neck-to-toe latex and leather as Selene the vampire.

In the second movie, some stuff happened, but I can’t remember what. The more I try to remember, the more the movie recedes into darkness. I have this same problem with all episodes of Doctor Who made prior to 2005 and any class I’ve ever taken that spent more than a month on Etruscan pottery.

The third movie was a prequel. Whatever.

The forth movie is subtitled, “Awakening,” because that’s what happens to you 88 minutes after you press play. Well-rested, you can have a cup of coffee and then try watching it again, because at 88 minutes, this movie packs a lot of incredible nonsense into a very short period of time. You’d have to watch two or maybe even three Nicolas Cage movies to get half as much silly, pompous, gunfire-ridden hokum.

Watching this movie leads to so many important questions. What happened in the second movie? Why is Selene the only one who knows Vampire CPR? How did she get her coat back? Was there really a third movie or am I getting this all confused with the time I fell asleep during a particularly turgid True Blood flashback sequence and woke up in the middle of an episode of Game of Thrones? Where does Selene keep all that ammunition and all of those guns in that latex and leather catsuit? Was I drooling on the couch earlier?

Underworld: Awakening was directed by a pair of unknown Swedish dudes because, apparently, Uwe Boll was busy.

Dracula's Homepage

Ooops. In all the election-posting, I forgot to post some of my Halloween-oriented posts, so here’s another one since Halloween has been extended one more weekend in my house.

Eminent Dracula historian, Professor Elizabeth Miller maintains Dracula’s Homepage, which contains more information on Stoker’s text than you may have ever thought possible.

hell, other people

I’ve been doing crazy amounts of stuff that have been keeping me running around like, well, the crazy-woman I am. I don’t have the stomach for community organizing, I’ve learned (read: enduring threats and learning what overt racism exists in dc-metro area). I prefer being knee-deep in artomatic organizing, which is hard work but lots of fun. And much less scary.

Tomorrow, I will of course pause to light a candle for imprisoned freedom fighter Martha Stewart.

In the meantime, in lieu of more interesting content, here’s a roundup of some of the more entertaining random encounters with strangers from the last few weeks:

ladies room, lemur lounge, 3 weeks ago
drunk woman: “That vampire look really works for you.”

Metro train, last week
young woman: “You look like a goth Marilyn Monroe!”
(stranger still, others agreed)

Sephora, Pentagon city mall, sometime in the last few weeks
woman with lipgloss tester in her hand: “Does this smell like pee?”

coffee shop, today
woman with sandwich in her hand: “Do you think this will give me gas later?”
(which reminded me of the time Husband and I were checking out books at the library and the librarian randomly announced to Husband, “I love brocoli, but it gives me gas.”)

Today’s lesson: You can work from home, but you can never escape.

Underworld

Last night I had an exciting stack of documentaries to catch up on.

In my netflix frenzy, however, I made an error. For reasons I can’t explain, I thought Underworld was an indie doc about sweatshops.

Boy, was I wrong. It’s a really cool movie about a war between vampires and werewolves. Great story, superb action, beautiful cinematography and tons of clever plot twists. Very fun.

braingate

I’m up to Buffy season 5 (and rewatching Angel season 2 so that it all makes sense) and now I understand the whole “spike with a chip in his head thing.” That, in addition to the usual ethical digressions I would go on, dulls my enthusiasm for the latest developments in brain implants a bit.

Cyberkinetics, the company developing the neural prosthetics, has set up a brief informational site about their BrainGate system, but the good scientific articles are all in proprietary databases and I really don’t have the energy, strength, or coordination to type up any excerpts today so there will be no discussion of bioethics here today.

I have a feeling it’s going to be a while before they develop the technology to enable me to shoot laser beams out of my eyes. Keep trying, boys.