she totally kicks a dog in the head!

i haven't seen a zombie movie in the theatre since the summer of 1993-1994 when i was taking a language course in taipei and one day my cousin eric chow took me out to go see return of the living 3. it was a great movie, and i remember we were eating spicy duck tongues in the dark theatre (americans have their popcorns, taiwanese have their duck tongues) which made the whole experience that much more visceral and memorable. anyway, when the zombies finally came out for the very first time in resident evil, i was so excited, i felt nostalgic.

i didn't go into the movie thinking it'd suck like the time machine. i knew from watching the trailer for the time machine that it wouldn't be a very good movie. something about the monsters being stupid and bad casting. resident evil i had more hope. it was a serious horror/science fiction movie. it doesn't have characters who are there just to provide comic relief. if you laughed, it's probably relief that somebody didn't die, or maybe they did but in a very gruesome manner.

the way the film is edited, every few minutes there's a scary moment. something jumps out of the corner, a zombie claw shoots out from nowhere. i've read some reviews that said the movie wasn't scary enough. how scarier do they want it? for me, i wasn't scared because i've seen enough horror movies to be somewhat jaded, but there were suspenseful moments in the movie that for someone with a higher sensitivity to horror would find quite scary. if anything, i'd say there was an overkill of the scary moments. after a certain amount of time, you get use to them and you can almost sense when the director is about to surprise you again.

milla jovavich as alice, the main hero of the movie: i've never been much of a milla fan. i have no strong opinions about her, although i've seen her in interviews and she's kind of ditzy, which is not reason enough to dislike her. but in resident evil, she's won me over to her side. she totally kicks a dog in the head! in a miniskirt no less. the dress she was wearing during the movie, when i first saw i thought it was kind of weird looking, all askew and dangling from one side, but the look sort of grew on me after a while. the few scenes where her secret agent training kicks in (initially she has amnesia), those scenes are awesome. there's a hungry appetite these days for girls who can kick ass, and she definitely kicks ass in the movie. my one complaint is that there weren't enough scenes of her breaking zombie necks or administering deadly headshots. maybe in resident evil 2 perhaps? and if you though her bandage outfit in fifth element was hot, wait until you see her wearing a shower curtain or two small white towels tied together by strings. if you're a milla fan, you owe it to yourself to see the movie just for her outfits!

and since we're on the subject of girls who kick ass, it's only befitting that michelle rodrigues of girl fight and the fast and the furious would be in this movie as well. does she have any other acting style other than scowling tough chick?

i must've read somewhere that it was directed by paul anderson but then i forgot about it. paul anderson i recognize from event horizon, another great movie in the horror/scifi genre. very stylish, he's very good at these kind of movies.

coolest death scene in the movie: spoiler the laser room and how it totally sliced and diced the special team sent into the hive to shut down the homocidal security ai. that scene got one the biggest reaction out of the crowd last night. people were clapping and screaming and laughing, has to be seen to be believed.

i thought this was a very well made horror/scifi movie. the fact that there are zombies and that milla totally kicks a dog in the head should be reasons enough to go see it. did i mention the outfits? did i mention that sick death scene with the lasers? if you're looking for some cinematic escapism that's slick as the coagulated zombie blood marking the floors of the hive compound, then you can do no better than resident evil. if you're into these kind of movies, you will not be disappointed.

this morning i stopped off at harvard square to get some cash, get a box of bandaids for eliza, and buy a copy of smart money magazine for my mother. coming out the station there were these girls outside passing out sample cans of pepsi twist, that new pepsi flavor with a touch of lemon. i read the magazine i bought on the train ride into kendall square. for two stops i was that sophisticated guy on the t who appears to be all knowledgeable in the high stakes world of finances! in reality, i know very little, if anything at all.

i got to the office and tried the sample pepsi twist. tastes just like pepsi, with a bit of lemon flavor. i have no strong opinions about it one way or another. given the choice, i'd still go with pepsi just because i'm so use to it. i like to think that i'm not one of those people who has to have something just because it's new.

during lunch originally i was thinking about a quiet meal at empire chinese restaurant, but instead i went with amanda and carrie to buy cakes and ice cream for the 6th year company anniversary party we'd be having later today. i went looking for the star market prepared meals, but apparently at this particular star market (the one close to cambridge street) they don't carry them, so i had no choice but to settle for some sort of canned soup, picking the chef boyardee beef ravioli in tomato sauce.

coming out of the supermarket, i had some change so i decided to get a sticker from this one particular vending machine that was selling images of the virgin mary, jesus christ, and hotrods. off in the distance i heard amanda mutter something about how immature i was. the sticker i got was a really weird one. the background was this repeating holographic pattern, it had the words "f b county", a photo of a woman, and a picture of a man (handlebar moustache, dark glasses, convict?) sitting on a large 8 ball shackled to a leg in what appeared to be in jail, all inside of a keyhole frame (further emphasizing encarceration). in one corner are some text that read © 1998 sleepy "g" and on the back it said "made in taiwan." the whole sticker - its symbolism and hidden meaning - are all quite interesting. what does it all mean i wonder? and is this the kind of thing that little kids would be interested in collecting?

back at the office i suddenly got busy and didn't have a chance to eat my chef boyardee ravioli before we had our 6th year anniversary office party. we all gathered in a room, and once sarah arrived, we sang "happy birthday to me" and then she cut the cake. i didn't have any of the cake, but i did have a cup of half vanilla half chocolate ice cream. it was all very subdued, kind of like my birthdays. shortly there afterwards, everyone went back to work, friday not yet over.

i got a lot of grief for that chef boyardee lunch! for $1.29, that's a pretty cheap meal i think, you can't argue with that price. i don't think anyone can say that i eat badly. i consider myself somewhat of an epicurean, i enjoy eating, i know what i like and don't like. chef boyardee today, but last week i was having lunch in the north end and kicking it with some korean box lunch special down in chinatown.

after work i walked down towards the galleria mall. there's this one house that i pass by that seems to be really into the holidays, always decorating the entire outside of the place including the windows in festive decorations. st.patrick's day being this sunday (forgive me if i say that this holiday has degraded into a shameless excuse to drink, not really about celebrating irish heritage), this particular house was all lit up in glorious leprechaun and shamrock motifs. strangest thing i saw: leprechaun gnome lanterns. when i got to dan's office i haggled with the guards to let me go upstairs and then waited an eternity for dan to finish up his timesheet so we could leave. coming up to the intersection besides the lechmere stop, i noticed the top row of windows at the candy factory was all aglow in blue. what goes on in there?

after unsuccessfully trying the cheesecake factory at the mall (more than an hour wait to get seated), we decided to get some brazilian food and dan happened to know a place close to fenway 13, which was were we'd be going after dinner to watch resident evil, opening night. it took a little bit of walking to find, but finally we arrived at buteco, this small brazilian restaurant tucked away in the middle of a quiet residential neighborhood. the food we ordered was excellent, at least i thought so. for an appetizer, we ordered a dish of brazilian sausage cooked in onions that came with this very hot salsa dipping sauce. the sausages reminded me of those hard, salty morning sausages i had in turkey. after we finished the sausages, i was still eating straight from the salsa dip, getting a heavy spice rush. dan was also wolfing down guaraná as if his life depended on it, served in a classy wine glass. for our main course, dan had some sort of fish, i had some kind of lamb, both served with rice and black beans. i was sort of disappointed when i saw my meal (looked nothing like what i imagined it to be from the description in the menu), but after my first tasting of a cut of lamb, i was nodding my head in agreement, whatever they did to prepare the lamb, it's excellent. very strong lamb flavor which is what i like, not cooked so much that you can't even tell what kind of meat it is. originally we also wanted desserts, but seeing that we only had 10 minutes left before we had to meet elias at the theatre at 8:30pm, we decided to forego the sweet stuff until next time.

buteco was actually very close to the theatre, like three blocks away. when we got there, i retrieved the tickets that i had ordered through fandango from the automated vending machine. we then hurried to get in line since we could already see a huge line snaking inside the theatre, and we assumed correctly that it'd be for resident evil. we saw elias already in line, about 20 people ahead of us. when we got into theatre 13 (the big screening room that they use for the big movies), elias had reserved some seats for us. sweet!

afterwards, elias drove back home to jp while dan and i headed down to kenmore station. not sure what it was, but as soon as we left the theatre, i wasn't feeling too well, my stomach was growling, felt like something bad might happen. at kenmore dan and i parted ways, and i took the green line then transfered to the red. since i left my running shoes at work, i decided it'd be the perfect opportunity for me to pick them up plus i could also use the office bathroom while i was there. later, after the crisis was resolved, i managed to get a hold of my sister and she was able to swing by the office (after i coached her play-by-play on how to get to srm) and give me a ride back home.

i'm not sure what i ate that caused a bad reaction. the number one suspect would be the brazilian, but i didn't eat anything funky. maybe it was a deadly combination of the pepsi twist, ice cream, chef boyardee, and buteco that gave me a case of indigestion. regardless, i'd still go back to buteco, that place is just too good.