Movie Review - Gallowwalkers (2007)

Simon Phoenix in Demolition Man. Nino Brown in New Jack City. "Flip" Purify in Jungle Fever. Shadow Henderson in Mo' Better Blues. John Cutter in Passenger 57. The dude that slapped Michael Jackson in the music video "Bad". The unnamed brother towards the end of Waiting to Exhale.  Blade.

These are the roles of the Wesley Snipes I know and love. Granted he's been through the ringer over his taxes and spent 3 years behind bars over them, he still turns in great performances. It was this last role that has given me pause: that of Aman, the main character from the direct-to-DVD movie Gallowwalkers. It's a horror-Western, so bear with me.
The reasonable facsimile of the American West setting is played by the Namib Desert, found in the southwestern African country of Namibia.  It is a very beautiful place, and is part of a country that has no extradition treaty with the United States (which is good so Mr. Snipes can make a movie without federal agents arresting him on site). That said, our story focuses not on taxes, but on a blood debt to be collected by butcher-turned-bounty hunter Aman (Snipes). He hunts the Gallowwalkers: a group of people he once killed in a rage of revenge for the rape of Sueno (Alyssa Pridham), the woman he loved. They have since come back and now wreak havoc on the world, which means one thing, true believers: Aman has to kill them. Again.

WESLEY SNIPES WINS
FATALITY

Aman is somewhat typical for a main character in a horror-Western: he is mysterious, wears a lot of dark colors in the hot ass sun, seems nigh invulnerable, and can do things normal men cannot. For instance, he shows proficiency in surgical procedures not seen since the first Mortal Kombat video game as he rips a Gallowwalker's skull from his body with the spine still attached with his bare hands.

Knowing the they're being hunted by a guy who can do that doesn't stop the other Gallowwalkers from running about and causing trouble. Enter the rest of the gang: Skullbucket (ex-wrestler Diamond Dallas Page), Kisscut (the wide-jawed Simona Brhlikova), and the others led by Kansa (Kevin Howarth).  They have distorted the ideas of law and justice to their own ends, and have marshal Gaza (Patrick Bergin) and his deputies under their thumb to provide access to fresh bodies. It's where we meet the kid Fabulos (Riley Smith) and the whore Angel (the very lovely Tanit Phoenix) about to be sacrificed when they are freed by Aman.  Only Fabulos escapes to partner with Aman in his quest for revenge, while Angel remains captured and will be a sacrifice to resurrect Kansa's dead son (also murdered by Aman).  Not content to suffer Kansa and his crew, Aman and Fabulos fight them to the last and save Angel.  There isn't much after that, as the director Andrew Goth goes for a Kurosawa-style western ending.

"Well, I suppose I have a little while before the
shoot is over and I have to go back to America
and face trial..."

This movie was not going anywhere aside to direct-to-DVD.  It had been in the can since 2007, but due to the tax thing it sat for 5 years or so.  Though the quality of Mr. Snipes' acting is not in question, but the level of technical expertise is inconsistent.  One minute, it's extremely stylized and the next it's on par with Bloodrayne II (hint: not a good movie). It's even interpreted that these Gallowwalkers are akin to skin-walkers, in a very literal sense: they are able to change their shape by killing and then wearing the skin of their victims.  That explains the constant bleeding even when they are not wounded. Visually it's amazing and strangely clear, but in terms of a story telling aspect it's one of a litany of problems in this non-linear tale of revenge and undead outlaws.

I truly wish this were a better movie and that it hadn't been delayed for 5 years, because then I wouldn't have to wait for Expendables 3 to come out to see Wesley Snipes in a mainstream movie.

Comic Book Review: Gammarauders, volume 1 (1989)

Just look at that cover. Everything is
happening at once MAKE IT STOP
and who is that woman in the
smiley-face mask?

This weekend I found the worst comic book I have ever seen, even worse than any art by Rob Liefeld--and that's saying a lot.  It's inconsistent, poorly proportioned, confusing, and altogether bad.  The worst part about it: the artist was trying to mimic the manga style, even going so far as to use screentones for things the artists didn't want to draw.  Unfortunately, I bought them out of the dollar bin.  The comic in question is based on an old TSR tabletop game called GAMMARAUDERS--

STOP. 

Just look at that name. GAMMA...RAUDERS. By all that's holy, this is gonna sting.

For the sake of brevity, it's a comic about dudes piloting giant cyborg mutant animals (called "Bionoids") in the post-apocalyptic future against faceless enemy combatants called "Slugoids".  That's a mouthful, and it doesn't explain why the script is so "all-over-the-place".  We have a few settings like Dodge City, Boom Town, the Big Nada (Is it a demilitarized zone? A nuclear wasteland? An uninhabited stretch of land? I've seen the comic panels and I still don't know) and the Slugoid base, and several factions roaming about these areas like Da Boyz, the Rayzors, and the Friends Of What's Left Of The Earth (F.O.W.L.O.T.E.).  Odd thing: some of these organizations are gangs of post-apocalyptic survivors, not unlike biker gangs.  These people dress in period clothing to mark their gangs: Rayzors dress like Marlon Brando in "The Wild Ones", and Da Boyz dress like 30's gangsters--in zoot suits, no less.  Our heroes, the Gammarauders, somehow are the ones that come out looking like fashion victims.

FINAL ISSUE? *yesssss*

To count the Gammarauders, we have our everyman Jok Tadsworth and his mutant cyborg mecha kangaroo named Hoag (the mecha has an Australian accent, but the pilot does not).  He is teamed up with such characters as the green-clad feminist Natasha (who pilots a poorly-drawn cyborg triceratops...moving on), the Aryan-esque all-American Ridley McMann (piloting a cyborg King Kong--that joke writes itself), Jimbo the Black guy (and his cyborg emperor penguin) and Chuck, the other Black guy who's a samurai (and pilots a giant cyborg flying monkey that speaks Japanese. Believe it or not that part actually makes sense.)  There's a plot, but Lord knows it doesn't really make for good reading--it involves a bowler hat, a snow globe, and an obvious pull from "Citizen Kane". 

So far, I've read issues 1-4, 6, 7 and 9 out of a ten-issue series.  There were some highs and lows as I read, where the lows were most of the books and the only high note was knowing that our hero Jok becomes a wanted man plotting revenge on the Gammarauders for the death of Natasha (end spoilers).  It's as if he knew what I wanted to do and acted on it. I suppose if you had a giant cyborg mutant kangaroo at your disposal, you would also take revenge on GAMMARAUDERS, one of the worst comics I've read in a long time.

GAMMARAUDERS volume 1 gets a 1 out of 10, for making sense at least once.

Movie Review - Oblivion (2013)

I recently saw the latest Tom Cruise action movie vehicle Oblivion in theaters.  It had to have been made in direct competition with Will Smith's After Earth for no other reason than to piss in his face, because Will Smith's movie came to my eye well before Oblivion ever did.  It was a well-done rush marketing job, that made me wonder how the ad firm saddled with selling this film got it moving so fast.  Marketing questions aside, I have noticed something about Tom Cruise: not the fact that he's had his wives picked out for him by his religion (because arranged marriages are as old as human civilization), or how Hollywood goes to the absurd lengths to tell us he's a great actor (despite only having four or five acting settings, of which "determined" is his best and makes him the most money).  Tom Cruise has recently played characters with the same name: JACK.

Mr. Cruise started playing Jack in Ridley Scott's Legend back in 1986, and it was the movie that inspired the Legend of Zelda (according to Shigeru Miyamoto). He played the titular character in Jack Reacher, and (although a stretch) played Stacee Jaxx in the film musical Rock of Ages.  Many of his characters are so close in temperament and behavior that they might as well be called JACK also.  I expect there to be a day when Mr. Cruise reveals to us all that his real name is not Tom but JACK.  With that out of the way, we can talk about our latest Jack, living above the ruins of old Earth--completely transformed and nearly empty of humans.

Mile High Club Headquarters? Possibly.

The humans of the future have fled to Saturn's moon Titan to escape the destruction wrought upon Earth by an invading alien race 60 years earlier--the Scavs.  Many Scavs still roam the surface of Earth, and attempt to strike out at large reactors built to convert sea water into fusion energy.  Most of thee facilities are guarded by drones, the spherical four-eyed white robots that fly about the skies.  These devices are programmed to shoot Scavs.  Sometimes they go bad and crash, and that's where Technician 49 (Cruise) comes in.  His name is Jack Harper, and he's been having strange dreams--of old Earth, of New York City, and a woman whom he feels a strong connection to...but has never met.  It brings him to start remembering things, which his "partner" Victoria Olsen (Andrea Riseborough) strongly discourages due to company regulations and a mandatory memory wipe for security purposes.  A red flag should pop up here, but for the grace of suspension of disbelief we soldier on with the story.

Julia (l) and Jack (r) realize they got to the observation deck
of the Empire State Building by stepping down off the ground. 
That is on the 86th floor, so that should give you a clue to
how screwed up the Earth is.

Not soon after a craft crashes into Zone 49, which is Jack's territory.  He feels the need to go in despite warnings from Victoria.  He proceeds in to find life pods scattered about the crash site.  All of them contain humans from an astronaut mission, and one of them contains the woman who has been haunting Jack's dreams of late: cosmonaut Julia Rusakova (Olga Kurylenko).  Eventually, Julia asks to have the black box recorder returned from her ship's landing site and Jack obliges.  Unfortunately, the Scavs are watching the landing site and capture both Jack and Julia.  A revelation hits them both once they meet the true faces of their captors: humanity is apparently fighting itself, and soldiers of "La Resistance" (aka the "Scavs") are led by Morgan Freeman.  And that's not the wildest part.

"Dammit, now where did I put that app?"

Oblivion is an amazing movie to watch.  It's got amazing design work from its sterile white house, to the geometric stylings of machinery (Jack's ship and collapsible dirt bike are a marvel, and don't get me started on those beautiful drones).  Much of the soundtrack is performed by my new favorite band M83, recalling the funk that is their smash hit "Midnight City".  Both of these combined remind me of the visual masterpiece that is TRON:Legacy, which is funny because Joseph Kosinski directed that film as well as Oblivion.  But there is a huge problem in the film (not counting the fact that Andrea Riseborough's irises never contract, which makes her look like a robot) with the twist at the end of Act II and the movie's denoument.

<<---NOTE: RAMBLING AND SPOILERS AHOY--->>

Movie Review - Near Dark (1987)

One of my avorite movies is the James Cameron movie ALIENS, sequel to Ridley Scott's Alien.  It was not only a wild sci-fi romp, but the characters were somewhat likable to the extreme, namely most of the characters who didn't die in the initial Xenomorph attack--I'm talking Hudson, Vazquez and Bishop.  It is a testament to the actors' craft that Bill Paxton, Jenette Goldstein, and the great Lance Henriksen are still widely remembered for their performance even in light of that totally sweet battle at the end of the movie.  However, I did not know if they all had been in another movie together since that film.  Behold, I have watched Near Dark, and sure enough...there they all are.  This time, Paxton wore the makeup and it ended up being plastered all over the cover because it was that good...but was not nominated for an award in the Special Effects category--anywhere.  It's a shame, but it was a stepping stone for smaller things into bigger things.

Our story opens up with a shot of a mosquito feeding on a handsome hillbilly named Caleb Colton (Adrian Pasar, the future President Nathan Petrelli from HEROES) as he wakes up to a sunset.  He heads into town and meets his friends, only to be distracted by a very beautiful young country ingenue.  He finds out her name is May (Jenny Wright) and she's in town with "friends".  He tries to woo her and convinces her to come with him out of town in his truck.  They go to his dad's farm and he attempts to show her a horse--which promptly runs from the petite young woman.  Figuring nothing's up with her, Caleb tries to put the moves on May but she stops him and wants to know what time it is.  Caleb reminds her it's near to dawn and she demands to be taken home.  He wants to know why and May suddenly persists to be taken home, as if something bad will happen.  He agrees, but before he takes her any further he begs just one last kiss.  May gives him one heckuva steaming kiss...and slips in a small nip to his neck, just before she flees into the morning twilight.

Vampires from LV-426 (l-r): Jesse Hooker (Henriksen),
Diamondback (Goldstein), and Severen (Paxton)
(not pictured: Homer [Joshua John Miller]).

Caleb shrugs off that rather odd foreplay and tries to start the truck, but the engine fails to turn over and start.  He decides to walk across the town fields as the sun rises, but finds his energy sapped every minute he's out there and can't figure out why his skin is burning and smoking.  Suddenly, he is kidnapped into a runaway RV and confronted by a pack of five filthy, murderous drifters--one of which turns out to be May (who is not so filthy or murderous).  On top of being a kidnapping victim, Caleb gets the worst news he could possibly get (thus far): he has been bitten and transformed into a vampire.

From this point forward, things get interesting.  With the previous statement, I present to you my Understatement of the Year for 2013.

Above: May (Wright) and Caleb (Pasar) share a tender
embrace.  This might be a case of beating a dead horse, but...
STILL A BETTER LOVE STORY THAN TWILIGHT

This movie was one that a few friends had recommended to me, namely those from US states with rural backgrounds.  It was entertaining, and a fun experience pointing out all the actors who have marched across the silver screen (namely Tim "Dollman" Thomerson and a young Theresa Randle).  I also found it interesting to note that this is the first mainstream film for director Kathryn Bigelow, who would go on to direct hits like the movie that got her name in lights, the 2008 military drama The Hurt Locker (starring Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters' male lead, Jeremy Renner) and the 2012 critical darling Zero Dark Thirty.  If this is the kind of movie she would direct in the future, she should have been a big name in Hollywood well before The Hurt Locker.  I suppose the accusations of a Hollywood Boys' Club preventing her from making movies are true: HER MOVIES ARE A LOT BETTER THAN WHAT MOST MALE DIRECTORS MAKE. 

To think, if Ms. Bigelow kept making movies like this, we might not deride the movie industry as mush as we do and we might've actually paid for the films we watch.  Sadly, we are too far gone and more people know of a world where you always have an option on how you watch your movies.  They will never know the feeling of sitting in a filthy non-IMAX/non-HD sound movie theater with a bunch of strangers (some of whom are smoking) over and over again to watch the same movie (because viewers in theater seats can't rewind or pause).  To know such a world of inconvenience no longer exists and has cost the movie industry brings a tear to my eye...but not as much as the ending for Near Dark.  It was sooooooooo bad, it's gonna cost the ratings score.

RATING: 7/10

Movie Review - Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)

I saw a photo in an issue of EMPIRE Magazine several years ago, and it made me wonder: is Gemma Arterton the next Kate Beckinsale?  I sincerely hoped so.  She has a nice face and that deadpan British accent that makes almost anything she says sexy as hell. The photo also helped, as she was clad in tight butt-hugging leathers and holding a crossbow, standing next to some guy (later I found out he was Jeremy Renner, star of The Avengers, The Town and The Bourne Legacy).  The photo was for a movie and it looked like an adventure in the same vein as Van Helsing--the type of movie set in Industrial period clothing but containing anachronisms, like sniper rifles with night-vision scopes or incendiary grenades.  It looked like it might be steampunk, so I checked the name:  HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS.

That already sounded nuts, so I was waiting for a while to see this one.  It was a similar situation when I was waiting for the American release of Solomon Kane: fucking unbearable.  Eventually I got to watch this movie, and I did it in IMAX 3D! So how was it, you ask?  It seems that too much anachronism can spoil what would otherwise be a good fantasy yarn.

"I noticed the script says you're a diabetic, Jeremy.
Are you alright with that?" "No...but says here you
headbutt a grown man with no blood on your forehead
or bruising. You're as pale as a sheet Gemma; how is that--"
"SOUNDS LEGIT; let's do it!"

To start us off, this movie is a VERY loose adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale about two kids who find a candy house, are captured by the cannibal witch who lives inside, and kill her in their attempt to escape.  Now these two kids have grown up to be Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and forward-thinking Gretel (Gemma Arterton), bounty-hunting the very supernatural creatures that mentally scarred them: witches.  They have come across several gadgets in their quest to rid the world of witches, like Mossberg pump-action shotguns, Tasers, split-level axial transforming perpendicular crossbows (you have to see it to believe it), folding rifles, carousel-loaded hand cannons, and what may be a Gatling or Maxim gun.  The most interesting part of the movie comes with Hansel and his "sugar sickness." It seems when the witch was trying to fatten Hansel up to eat him, she made him eat nothing but candy which made him sick.  Now in his adult life Hansel must take an injection of serum every few hours or he dies.  This makes Jeremy Renner's Hansel a diabetic hero (the first being Captain Novolin).  It's a good thing to have a weakness for a hero that seems somewhat invincible in the film.  Our heroine Gretel is not limited to such problems, and can fight without any real injury or hindrance.

Tenacious D says "THAT'S CALLED TEAM-WORK!"

Hansel and Gretel (whose makeup never smears, not even the blood) earn the enmity of a witch named...Muriel (played by Famke Janssen of X-Men fame) who wants to save her kind from these traveling murderers by sacrificing 12 souls during the Blood Moon--one for each month--and also needs the heart of a great White Witch to complete the ritual that grants any witch that drinks the brew created from the blood of the sacrifices to become immune to fire permanently.  A witch's enemies can tie her to the stake but she will not burn...totally worth the convoluted plan that can only happen once a year, I say.  Throw in some forgettable characters/love interests and discarded plot threads and you have an action movie for the summer...strangely placed in January.

Cool guys (and girls) don't look at explosions as they
walk away from them. Especially if they caused them.

I don't know what the goal of Dead Snow director Tommy Wirkola was when he set out to make this movie, but it would seem he needed to hire a different editor.  If he requested this cut, then he needs to fix it.  The editing was all over the place, and clipped several establishing shots to shorten the running time.  There were some problems, notably in the final battle sequence when Hansel drops his shotgun, Gretel comes in with a weapon and she is struck and drops it.  The next shot is of Hansel's shotgun hitting the ground.  The way that's ordered it looks like Gretel had Hansel's shotgun.  This confused me, but not nearly as much as allowing an untrained person to handle a rapid fire machine gun in a crowd setting.  It's a damned good way to get shot and give the witches what they want, but apparently not in this world.  In any case, I expect a Director's Cut of this film, with all the stuff that should have gone in to fill in any problem issues.  Other than that, a film that had great props and artwork but still needs a shine and polish to be complete.

RATING: 6/10

Movie Review - Chernobyl Diaries (2012)

The 1980s were a busy decade for major disaster events across the globe, and 1986 was no exception.  The two big stories were the Challenger Explosion above Cape Canaveral, FL, USA (an event I witnessed on television in school) and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster near Pripyat, Ukraine, USSR.  The Challenger explosion was more important to me at the time because I wanted to be an astronaut and it happened in America; what I learned about Russia came from movies like Rocky IV, Red Scorpion, and Red Heat.  While still important, I have seen what took place in Chernobyl and Pripyat and my heart goes out to the victims and their descendants.  More often, I hear of entertainment inspired by the disaster, and its aftermath--things like extreme tourism and urban exploration of abandoned Pripyat, the FPS video game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl and the horror movie Chernobyl Diaries.  These things never seem to display an understanding that a disaster happened there over 25 years ago and that one should be respectful of the victims.  Sadly, this very fact did not sell movie tickets or game units as much as "wander into a guarded radioactive exclusion zone and get scared/killed by radioactive mutant inhabitants".  If it didn't then I wouldn't have a movie to write about.

PRIPYAT EXPLORATION PARTY (from left to right):
Zoe the Norwegian, Michael the Australian,
Paul, Yuri the suspicious Russian tour guide,
Amanda, Natalie and Chris.

Chernobyl Diaries could have gone a completely different way, but for a vote and peer pressure.  Hence several stupid Americans--Chris (Jesse McCartney) and his very blonde girlfriend Natalie (Olivia Taylor Dudley), Chris' brother Paul (Jonathan Sadowski) and Natalie's friend Amanda (Devin Kelley)--a Norwegian (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal) and her Australian fiancee (Nathan Phillips) meet up in Kiev to go on an extreme tourism run to Pripyat to tour the abandoned radioactive city with their highly suspicious Russian tour guide (Dimitri Diatchenko).  The usual happens when they reach spoooOOOOky Pripyat: the vehicle is crippled somehow, cellphones don't work, nobody answers the Walkie-Talkie, and everyone jumps at shadows.  There was a point where I waited a full minute waiting for a jump scare after I called it.  Throw in mysterious humanoid things that attack from the dark that seem to have a taste for raw flesh and you have a recipe for disaster.  Especially when you realize that had Chris just stuck to his guns, he'd be still be alive to tell everyone abut his not-so-awesome European trip.

Chris was present when the vote was cast and he didn't have to go. But everyone else was going, and he had just been outvoted...by Natalie, the woman he wanted to marry.  This should have been the linchpin to let him know he shouldn't marry this girl if she wasn't going to use her head on a trip to a foreign country where blonde White women  go missing and nobody cares but the men who buy them.  Instead, he's like "Oh OK honey, we can go into the poisonous radioactive zone; I can propose marriage to you later" and never gets the chance.

"Like zoiks, Scoob, I wonder when the rest of the
gang'll be back"  "REAH! Re-hee-hee-hee..."

There were several things that made me wonder about this movie, especially the throwaway line about Chris accepting a one-way plane ticket to Kiev from his brother.  WHO THE FUCK DOES THAT? WHO ACCEPTS A ONE-WAY PLANE TICKET ANYWHERE FROM ANYONE, WITH NO WAY TO GET BACK ALREADY SET UP? 

When Amanda takes pics and sees images of faces spying from shadowy windows and doesn't tell anyone, despite constant speculation and queries about whether people still live in the abandoned city? That's like setting up your entire crew to get killed.  Also, those guards don't stand there for nothing all day: they were obviously are there to hold a line to keep people out or things in.  These tourists were more concerned about the money they spent to go on a trip to a dangerous and forbidden area than staying under the notice of the law.  Blonde-ass Natalie even made the comment, "We might end up in a Ukranian jail or something".  Bitch, you're lucky your dumb ass didn't get kidnapped by the drunk guys at the beginning of the movie and sold into sex slavery.  That would have been a lot more interesting to watch if her friends broke through hell to rescue her  instead of finding her barely molested corpse behind some machinery in Chernobyl.

OK so they know they're not supposed to be in Pripyat,
they know that Chernobyl is hella contaminated, and yet
they all go chasing an ill-prepared tour guide who
brought them to this living graveyard in the first place
through its hallways. Morons.

Which now brings me to a BIG issue I had with this movie: instead of facing down wild dogs (whom they could have intimidated with their tool-using opposing thumbs), they chose to go further into the radioactive zone, even into the site of the disaster itself--the ruined Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.  Here, nature reclaimed only so much, and a miscarriage of technology changed those left behind.  When the surviving members head deeper into the site, they had a Geiger counter with them, ticking off all the way and getting more intense as they approached certain areas.  At times their skin would blister, they would feel sick, and one guy even went blind.  It was made clear to them at the start that they would have to leave after a period of time to avoid radiation poisoning just being in Pripyat...and yet they went deeper in to...I don't know, get more poisoning. There was no one to save, no reason to go deeper.  It's like watching a murder victim in a slasher flick run upstairs to escape the killer.

IT'S A TRAP!

While the movie was bad, the ending was both good and fitting: no one survived, everyone got what they deserved, and no one bred their genes to make more stupid people. There are two down sides to this movie.  For starters, this may be the only information people may learn about Chernobyl or the issues with nuclear energy.  Second, this film was more money in the hands of Oren Peli, the man responsible for the Paranormal Activity series--now on its fifth movie. 
PLEASE STOP HIM BEFORE HE KILLS BRAIN CELLS AGAIN--DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE, NOT EVEN ON BOOTLEG.

RATING: 2/10

Movie Review - Lily C.A.T. (1987)

I stopped by my local used book store in Miami, called Paperback Book X-Change.  It was a subdued affair, picking up books to read on my trip to work, and I decided to get some VHS tapes to transfer to DVD.  I picked up two VHS tapes: Sword and the Dragon, and an anime I had always seen advertisements for but never actually watched, Lily C.A.T.

For some reason, it didn't look as interesting as Clash of the Bionoids (AKA Macross: Do You Remember Love?), Ninja Scroll, or AKIRA.  So I skipped it, until a few days ago.  I gave it a chance and I understand why I might have avoided it for so long.

Lily C.A.T. is the story of a bunch of astronauts aboard the deep space vessel Saldes on the way to planet LA-003 on orders from the Syncam Company.  Luckily, the daughter of the president, the very blonde Nancy, is on the trip with her cat Lily.  A motley crew of redshirts are also on hand to do their jobs for the company, but they are in cryo-sleep for most of the trip.  Over the 20 years in cryo-sleep, an incident takes place and allows an extraterrestrial pathogen into the ship's air supply.  When the crew wakes up...uh, this is usually where I say "hijinks ensue", but I can't bring myself to do so in a positive way...because this anime sucks in a bad way.

Lily C.A.T.: the story of a girl and her pussy...OR IS IT?

This anime has all the elements of an homage to Ridley Scott's ALIEN and the ALIEN franchise, as well as to John Carpenter's The Thing.  The problem is that it's NOT an homage of those films, just a ripoff.  From the duct taped weapons to the almost rotoscoped hallways of the Saldes, Lily C.A.T. is not worthy of being called a homage.  It does, however, create a suspenseful atmosphere and present some of the most screwed up images anime had yet to present to an audience.  Yoshitaka Amano (of Final Fantasy fame) was responsible for character designs (evident in the female costumes and character hairstyles) and monster design.  If only the entire anime was based on his style of art, then this would be a better anime not only for the art in general, but for the sheer fucked-upness of the monster design.

WAT

The alien monster in Lily C.A.T. is a consummate hunter, waltzing up on its prey and absorbing it into its form.  It does not have much to do except have its kills be cut away from.  If it was actually allowed to kill the humans onboard the Saldes, then it would be wholly like the ALIEN franchise.  There's another element to this anime that put me on edge: if the alien's not killing everyone, who else is killing the crew?  While the anime makes a big hullabaloo about stowaways called "time-jumpers" -- criminals who fake credentials to stow away on long-haul space trips to escape the statute of limitations on their crimes -- and who they are, the real mystery is in who is trying to kill the crew.  Other than the alien, of course.  If you wish to find out, I'm sorry to suggest that you'll have to watch Lily C.A.T. for yourself.

RATING: 5/10

A CONUNDRUM: HOW TO RELAX

This is my first post in 2013, and it's a doozy.  I couldn't sleep tonight because I find myself in a interesting conundrum: the idea of relaxation, how to relax, and stress.

How does one relax? I've found it odd that I have never been able to relax around others. My problem stems from the perception of relaxation.

When I was a child, I had a lot of pressure on me to succeed and I wanted to relax.  I could only do it when I was alone.  If I was seen doing what I thought was relaxing (i.e., sleeping, reading, playing video games, etc.), I was called "lazy" and that I should go relax outside. Going outside meant that I had to go do stuff--stuff that I already hate to do over the course of a busy week.
When I was with others and I was supposed to relax, I had to do all this stuff I was supposed to already know from...somewhere...and that was supposed to be relaxing.  If I could not do that, there would be a problem: questions why, peer pressure to conform, etc.  Oddly enough the solution to the first problem (answers to questions why) can elicit a negative response.  Now a new problem comes up: how to relax outside of other people  ('cuz you're not gonna stick around people you can't talk to).  The easy answer is to be alone, but how should one relax when alone?  Another easy answer; whatever you feel like.  This leads to the interesting conundrum at the start of this post and how it relates to the contemporary ideal form of relaxation.

If you find yourself in a group of people and begin to make small talk, the question comes up, "So, what do you do to relax?" or some permutation. To tell people what you do to relax supposedly says a lot about a person--and that's not a fair assessment.
Our world spends a ridiculous amount of money and time on crafting the ideal form of relaxation, from concerts (be they loud, bass-filled Spring Breaks or quiet opera nights) to vacations (preferably to picturesque lands or designed and designated travel destinations), even down to the desired physical effects of the trip (tan lines, souvenirs, photos, etc.).  Yet no one ever asks what people want to do to relax.  There are offers on what to do on the trip, and more often that not they're telling folks what to do and how to do it.  For argument's sake, let's say these instructions are for the safety of the vacationer.  Now comes the hard part: when you want to relax, you have a great deal of societal norms to follow, even in situations where the behavior is frowned upon (i.e., doing drugs).

So back to the idea of what people think about you when you answer the questions on how you relax.  Imagine someone making all kinds of assumptions and extrapolations based on the idea that you went to Paris on vacation this year.  They could assume the following in a positive light, by virtue of your destination:

• you speak French
• you have money to travel across the Atlantic
• you have connections in Europe
• you are important

Oddly enough, some would say the same of drug kingpins, computer hackers, and Moroccan terrorists. These assumptions listed by bullets above are but a few that make many people who take vacations in the BO-RING lower 48 to think they must somehow get to these artificially elevated places. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

I want everyone who reads this to evaluate how you relax and why you relax the way you do. Is it because you want to relax this way or because someone told you this is the way you are to relax or should relax? Have your ideas on relaxation been shaped by outside influences (TV, internet, etc.) or are they internally formulated?  It's a bit deep to think about relaxation, and you wanna say to what you're reading now, "Dude, just chill out and relax" but get this: I have heard the word "relax" so much in my life without support on what people who tell me that want to see or hear or know in reference to that word, that every time I hear it I tense up and I CANNOT RELAX.

It's so weird, but it happens every time. Same thing happens when people ask me to "loosen up" or "be more flexible".  Usually when I am asked this from people I know or have met, I find this precedes a change in attitude: one minute it's "loosen up" and the next it's "get serious".  I know there's a time and place for all these things, but sometimes things just ain't funny. And sometimes they're hilarious.  I'm not some sort of sociopath, but I swear this kind of activity is driving me insane--and you'd go insane too if someone was playing yo-yo with their scale of seriousness every other week.  So I lock up and cannot relax.  In my experiences, there's just too much expectations on what is and isn't relaxing or relaxation.

I need to find a way to relax with people, or I'm going to be locking a lot of doors behind me.  Does anyone have any suggestions that does not involve illicit or illegal drugs?  I'd like to hear from you; please reply in the comment box below.

TL;DR: How can one relax around people without being self-conscious and getting fucked up first?