Morning Vent, 5 April 2010

    The morning agenda centers around a leaky bathroom sink. Our local plumber is scheduled for HQ access any time between 8AM and 2PM. We'll see if he can get through security. Reibo's head cold seems a bit better today; he's not waking up with coughing jags while he sleeps. I'm as yet uninfected, so maybe I'll skate by this time. Today's rather lengthy, movie-related vent came about due to a dose of insomnia. I woke up at 1AM, and I couldn't get back to sleep. Naturally, my thoughts turned to Milla Jovovich.
    I'm occasionally using a gun and girl-related YouTube link, as I've done today, in place of the usual gungirl at the head of the Vent. Today's embedded vid is less an endorsement of the upcoming Resident Evil: Afterlife than one for Milla Jovovich.

 Resident Evil: Akimbo Overload

    Despite critical brickbats, the original Resident Evil was a better than average game movie. And, of course, in addition to Milla's lethal Alice, the original R.E. had Michelle Rodriguez's stand out performance as Rain Ocampo. I love tough chicks, and Rain Ocampo, right from the first in-your-face "Blow me!"  to the flash-banged and cuffed R.E. character Matt Addison, became my gun-toting dream girl even more than Milla's acrobatic Alice.

Rain Ocampo takes no shit.

    The R.E. sequels, tho still fun, were pretty Meh. for me. Yeah, Milla was always teh hot and athletically awesome as Alice, and the action scenes in Resident Evil: Apocalypse were still spectacular, but it also had early symptoms of sequelitis, particularly in the over-the-top Nemesis sequences. (Each movie in the series, IMO, is also weakened from a crucial script/directorial misstep: Every single R.E. movie kills off a cool character who should not die - sometimes more than one.) Although Resident Evil: Apocalypse suffered from some directorial limpness, it did manage some innovative action scenes. Here's a nice fan-made YouTube montage of action scenes featuring R.E. Apocalypse's Nicholai and Carlos, set to Three Days Grace "Time of Dying":

Resident Evil: Apocalypse (Time of Dying)

YouTubed by Luiscaramba

    (Here's a bit of trivia: Zack Ward, who plays the zombie-dog-slaying S.T.A.R. commando Nicholai Gonvaeff, also played Scut Farkus in A Christmas Story.)

    With the Mad Maxification of Resident Evil: Extinction, the R.E. series reached a nadir. Fast zombies were an interesting idea; having them run around during the day just made them look like what they were: rubber mask-wearing stuntmen in overalls. Australian director Russell Mulcahy, who also directed another of my faves, Highlander (the theatrical version), must have had a brain cramp on that one.

    Can Resident Evil: Afterlife recover the franchise? Possibly. After all, after Resident Evil: Extinction, the bar is set pretty low. Paul W.S. Anderson, director of the original R.E., is back in the director's chair. He is not only Ms. Jovovich's husband (and therefore the luckiest bastard in the free world), he also directed two of my favorite flicks, Soldier and Event Horizon. Not perfect movies by any stretch of the imagination, but they were hugely fun and beautifully filmed.
    The Resident Evil: Afterlife trailer hypes the 3D aspect heavily. One of the title cards even points out that the movie used the same 3D camera system as James Cameron employed for the astoundingly successful Avatar. Maybe having Paul W.S. Anderson back in charge will pump some new life (no pun intended) into the R.E. franchise. The action scenes look pretty spiffy, if you like a lot of John Woo-style akimbo shooting-as-you're-falling gunplay. I'll probably see the movie, if only to gaze longingly at Milla Jovovich in 3D.