AndrewTS

Well, I knew this truly would be a horrible, horrible film, but I've seen far worse, and the promise of laughs from how crappy it was convinced me to whip out one of my free movie certificates and check it out. My 2 cents--contains spoilers... Okay, we start out with an expository crawl *and* a voiceover (apparently Boll figures anybody who earnestly enjoys his films is illiterate). There's some ancient civilization that supposedly sealed off an entrance to the realm of the dark and around that time they're civilization vanished off the face of the earth. Blah blah.. Slater is Carnby, there's an evil dude called Prof. Hudgens who, starting 20 years ago, has been trying to open this door. He works for a government paranormal agency, so I guess it's to find out about crap that shouldn't be screwed with. After they discontinue his research he continues his work in other ways. Why? Power I guess. His "research" involved attaching things to 20 orphans' spinal columns (come on, *one* orphan's heart is enough to unleash evil...), but Carnby's malfunctioned when he escaped and hid inside of a generator. (How? Did he get a big, likely-would-be-fatal electric shock? Never explained). Supposedly the orphans are the key to unleashing them...but...*shrug*...the crawl says it was to make man/monster fusions. It turns out that aligning yourself with the creatures of the dark (which seem to be mindless killing machines, but whatever) allows you to obtain incredible power. Is Hudgen aligned with them? Hell if I know, because he seems to be scared to death of them at one point, and shoots himself up with blood from one of them (that's in a cage), then seems to inexplicably be able to control them later on. Doesn't seem that they're willingly helping him. The other orphans from the orphanage apparently are under Hudgen's control. Supposedly the spinal-taps are why, but that doesn't explain how they turn into Evil-Dead-ish Carpathian Demon Possessed People. What purpose they serve is unclear, because all Hudgen does with them is sick them on Carnby and Cedrac (Slater and Reid. I'll use them interchangably, since it isn't like they're characters in a *real* movie anyway). Apparently the malfunction in Carnby's spine leech screwed things up, but why didn't Hudgen get another orphan? And it seems Hudgen stuck another spine-buddy on his assistant. None of this is explained, of course... Anyway, Hudgen's quest to unleash these creatures from the dark results in him having to track down artifacts from around the world. Did I mention that the "ancient civilation" was a NATIVE AMERICAN ONE?! I guess before the last of them died out they piled into huge futuristic airpships and scattered them all over the world or something. Anyway, first hour or so is filled with stupid dialogue and lots of plotholes. Carnby had apparently joined the secret government organization that was investigating the paranormal stuff later on, but when he was trying to find out what happened with the orphanage situation, any leads kept getting classified. So he's been out on his own trying to figure it out, and has a friend, Fischer, still there who leaks him some info. Reid's character, Aline Cedrac, works at a museum and Hudgens continues his quest under that cover. Carnby has found an artifact from the ancient civilization, but needs info on it for it to be of any use. Slater meets up with Reid at the museum. Reid hasn't seem him in years, hugs him, and promptly punches him in the face for not contacted her for all that time. Reid and Slater apparently are ex-boyfriend and girlfriend. Yah. One of the creatures from the dark...Giger-Alien-esque buggers who this movie SHAMELESSLY calls "Xenos," wrecks the museum and tries to kill Reid and Slater. Military guys bust in and shoot the crap out of things, and Slater doesn't get an info on the situation since it's classified. He clashes with the abrasive Burke, who leads the unit. *shrug* We learn that gold can contain the evil buggers (and a few other elements conveniently right beside it on the periodic table). Gold's what the ancients used to contain 'em, though. Anyway, I got a kick out of the sex scene Reid had with Slater for NO EXPLAINED REASON. Poor Slater--they played a song during that where they kept repeating the lyric "Seven seconds away." Soon after that, the "exciting" part of the movie begins, where Boll ends up ripping off Aliens as best he can (which is pretty damn poorly) Lots of military peeps get killed, Hudgens drops an EVIL POSSESSED TEQUILA WORM into Fischer's mouth, turning him into a possessed mofo and sicks him on Carnby (apparently that's the upgraded version of the spinal thing). Zillions of bullets are fired, they end up at the lab where Hudgen had been conducting his research. Anyway, the military folks set up camp as they venture into the abandoned gold mine where Hudgen's old lab was. Slater, Reid, and some of the military peeps get sent in, get attacked by evil snake creatures (oooh, I guess that's what that worm was, a baby sand snake). Poor Ho Sung Pak doesn't even get to kick any ass, as he falls to his death on a bed of spikes (shades of Mortal Kombat 1...), and is squished further by a huge stone column. The surviving team makes their way to the underground lab as Hudgen's Xenos kill pretty damn near the entire unit at base camp. Carnby learns the rest of the info WE KNEW AT THE BEGINNING OF THE MOVIE, and almost tries to open the door (but he couldn't have anyway without the rest of the artifacts). Hudgen shows up, getting the last artifact he needs, and opens up the door where all the evil dark realm buggers live. Fight scene occurs, Hudgen is killed, but the door is opened. "What is it about the gates of hell that compels people to wander into it?!" Well, after checking in with their flashlights and finding a huge cavern filled with Xenos (and similar-looking species of them), Reid, Slater, and Burke haul ass out of there, closing an outer door but not the ancient's door that had been kept closed...and actually, it seems to hold them. Perhaps the door contained some of those other elements that were capable of holding them...? Well, I guess we don't find out, because Burke GOES BACK, opens the mechanical outer door, impotently shoots at them, and decides them to BLOW UP THE WHOLE CAVERN!!!? Why? Hell if I know. Anyway, Slater and Reid escape by exiting a storm-celler entrance just as the bomb is going off and fills apparently miles of caverns with fire and brimstone... Afterwards, Reid and Slater check out the nearby city, which subtitles tell us have been evacuated...Slater seems to think that our civilization was wiped out, though...and nobody is in sight anywhere in the city. We get the patented Raimi Evil-Force-Cam rushing at Slater and Reid from behind, they turn around, scream, movie ends in a direct rip from Evil Dead II. Disgusted viewers still in the theater get up and wonder what that crap was they just saw. ...at least that's my best attempt to put together a coherent summary. Yes, it's very bad; laughably bad in plenty of places. As funny as Wood's movies? Not by a long shot. Boll has enough of a budget to fix up plenty of the problems Wood was unable to. It's still hilarious to watch, but sadly, there's plenty of padding that you have to sit through in between. Awful, awful film, but hilariously inept. Take a fellow enthusiast of Deep Hurting and have a hell of a time if you can find another brave enough. You still suck truckloads, Uwe, but for entertainment value you still aren't fit to caress Wood's panties. It's just a thrown-together summary I posted while it's still fresh in my mind. If you want any clarification on details, I'll do my best to try to explain it, if the movie did at all. Of course, there are lots of things the movie never attempted to make any sense of.

EA has the Marvel license now, not Capcom. The most they could do, considering CVS2 is out on the three major consoles, is take perhaps CVS1's remixed version and slap it on a disc with...SVC Chaos (ick). However, if they add online play Game Informer will likely give such a compilation at least an 8. Considering some of the games that come out in Japan, that's totally mundane. Although, wouldn't it require a hell of a reworking, considering that Japanese law is likely quite a bit different from U.S. law? It'd goes beyond most mere "localization," I'd imagine.

Nice. If they don't clip the matches, that leaves the wrestling just a little shy of 50 minutes, leaving a good half-hour for skits, etc.

Johnny who? I think even WCW would have had enough good sense not to bother with him.

The PS2 was damn expensive at launch, it had a shitty lineup (except for OMGTEKKENTAGRULZ), and the first consoles were buggy as all hell. It didn't stop Sony from dominating then, so I doubt that it's going to cause the PSP to bomb either. Who cares about Spider-Man 2 on UMD when you can get the damn DVD right now for under 10 bucks?

The one game I'm actually interested in on the entire list: Lumines™, Ubisoft I guess the PSP Viewtiful Joe was canned. Then again, maybe it'll come out later on, like I just *know* Devil May Cry has gotta be. Is there any reason for anyone who owns a PS2 and owns the analogs to those games to bother with this thing? Vampire Chronicles could be interesting depending on how the multiplayer support works, but it's still an old game. Plus I own Vampire Savior and the "HK special" DC version Vampire Chronicles, so meh. Note: For those unaware, Vampire Chronicles is basically to Darkstalkers 3/Vampire Savior what Hyper SF2: Anniversary Edition is to SFII.

I expect good sales and a crappy game.

2GOLD gets the gold star for calling it.

I scored a boxed/complete one for forty, and sold it for 90 bucks before. I also second that Matt's a deadbeat lazy phuck. No offense intended, of course.

Original Sheik, yes. The one related to Sabu. The Iron Sheik, no. WWE tries to avoid mentioned that angle or the circumstances from it, though. You'll sometimes see Hogan in vid packages legdropping and pinning Slaughter, but that's about it.

In all fairness, it isn't even close to being worth that much.

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp...d=20010726NY115

Most refurbs can have a warrantly tacked on pretty cheap. And you're not any more likely to have a refurbed PS2 conk out on you than a new slim-model one. The refurbs have been fixed up good as new if there were any problems with them, and in either case, Sony are a bunch of cheap-asses when it comes to manufacturing consoles. Why should they make quality hardware when people will just buy another when their old one craps out?

For anyone who has it and is using the fliptop--what swap disc you using? My magic-swap DVD is version 2.0. Is this one picky about it?

Great post, Downhome. Oh, don't know if it is true or not--but check out this interesting story about Boll... http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=2649 Oh, and from this person's experience, "Sanctimony" and "Heart of America" were supposedly crap too. Boll reminds me of Coleman Francis' nephew in that pic.

My Hollywood video had they pre-played, in which must be either a computer error or a major change in their pre-played policy. And these are complete with the casings and everything, so it's as good as just about any pre-played EB/Gamestop game. Anyone else's Hollywood Video doing this? Yeah, Budokai sucks, but it's included. They also had the Spongebob Movie game have this same deal. Maybe HV is going to do this from now on with pre-played stuff, since I scored a couple Spyro: A Hero's Tails for 10 bucks too.

Already saw the interview and commented about it on another board. After seeing Alone in the Dark (for free, for mocking purposes only ) I wonder just how horrible Bloodrayne can be. Well...I guess I could look at it this way--he cast Tara Reid in AitD and apparently thought it would be able to stand up enough on it's own merits that she didn't have to get naked or show any skin on screen for that "sex scene." However, *this* movie...oh, it's gonna hurt. Wait a minute--okay, Alone in the Dark cost 20 million bucks in production budget alone, opened to just over 10% of that, and they gave him a 50 million dollar production budget?!?! Okay, I guess it's a little late for anything to be done about it (BR's in post now, I believe), but...damn.

I have *two* Movie Gallerys around here. Yeah, they do the buy-2, get-1 deal, and I believe they let you mix and match games and movies on it. They've had some good deals there, like a 30 dollar Halo 2, recently a 20 dollar Ninja Gaiden, some of the platform goodness titles for $15, and Soul Calibur 2 for $15 (these days no biggie, but they did it back before it went GHs I believe.) However, they take their sweet-ass time putting out pre-playeds. Does your Movie Gallery reek of window cleaner too?

Not for WWE. Mr. America--signed sight-unseen? Computer error. "Mmm..yeah...his contract actually expired last May, but he kept getting sent paychecks and making appearances...we never really noticed it expired."

I *know* there's a live action movie, but isn't there an anime too, and which one(s) are unavailable here?

When Milk Chan gets too gimmicky, it may not be entertaining, but the original ep (the Belgium Waffle one), the Punishment Missile ep, the one where the pigs tried to defect, nearly anyone with the robot dog in it, the ep with the killer bear on the loose, and the one where the President's cat ran away (which had plenty of disturbing lines in it...) all were hilarious. There's so many eps where they go for weird gimmicks and they may or may not turn out well. Back on topic, any announced released date for the Venture Bros. S-1 DVD?

ew

Perhaps I could, with a *small* service charge. Depends on if friends beat you to the offer. Yes and no. Our HV does "buy 2, get one free" for games. So in this case, you'd be paying $19.98 plus tax on 3 games.

One of the creators has a blog and he was begging people to watch the Christmas Special back in December because it needed the ratings. They find out at the end of next month if it gets another season. Correction--I meant 600,000. That instance was on a weekday, though. Often on the weekend it usually places in the top 3 still. And the Christmas ep didn't get any advertising that I saw and wasn't on at the regular time, so meh. Oh, and I love Super Milk-Chan, hate TGTTM. *Shrug* I only saw two eps of TGTTM, but I guess that's all there are. They're running ads for Robot Chicken, which uses Action-Figure-mation. Could be interesting, but--come on, parodying Kill Bill now? Geez. Was it held back for about 2-3 months?

It could be worse. He could be fucking up GOOD video games. Oh, in a recent interview, we learn the whole reason Bloodrayne was made... Well, at least Yuna will be interested.