Videogame Night

Tonight the gang's going to converge in The Sanctum for some retro-gaming fun. It's something that Dean and Vin planned a couple of weeks ago, and now we're pushing through. Of course, we won't be playing any of the new stuff- lined up will be classic games like Bushido Blade, Samurai Shodown, Super Street Fighter II and games from the Sega Genesis like Toejam and Earl. I don't exactly know how things will work out, but we'll have chips and softdrinks and hang out till the gang gets a hankering for some singing in the wee hours of the morning. Heh.

Found


Forty castaways. An island. A monster. Whoa.

Finally watched LOST last night. I've been hearing of this popular hit series from Dean for a long time now, but it was only last night that it debuted on AXN.

From J.J. Abrams, the director of Alias, comes this series which seems to be a cross between Survivor, Alive, Gilligan's Island and Jurassic Park. A plane mysteriously crashes on an island somewhere in the middle of nowhere. As the forty or so survivors pick themselves out of the wreckage, they soon have to contend with various issues, and not just mundane stuff like getting food and surviving the elements... they have to contend with the possibility of a murderer in their midst, discover the truth about the crash and the growing fear that they may never get rescued.
All this and there seems to be a MONSTER on the frickin' island. A big, hulking, growling, flesh-rending monster... that seems to be invisible as well, since no one seems to have ever seen it... at least, not seen it and lived.

It's an intriguing premise, and the cast looks likeable and interesting to watch. They even have Dominic Monaghan (Merry from LOTR) in it... I wonder if he lasts long though...

Anyway, LOST is showing every Thursday on AXN. Find it if you can.

Triple X

There has been quite a lot of hubbub around the future of the X-men movie franchise, especially after director Bryan Singer defected to the DC movie Superman, taking with him several actors (notably James "Cyclops" Marsden). Anyway, a new director for X3 has been named- never heard of him though- and there will be new characters joining the X-crew for the third film.
Joining Professor X, Wolverine and the rest will be the furry Beast, Cajun card-flinger Gambit and... get this... a FEMALE Angel. OOOH! Seeing as how a winged femme fatale was so cool in Constantine (a bitchy Gabriel, care of Tilda Swinton), I'm actually excited to see the girl-version of Warren Worthington. Heh.

Well, no word on the story, though judging from movie 2 the Dark Pheonix saga may be the thing that's in for the next one. As long as they still have Rebecca Romjin-Stamos as Mystique, I'm still in for it. Heheh.

Darna

As if in response to my recent interest in the upcoming Darna TV series, I got a reminder of how stinky the franchise can get via probably THE worst movie with the Darna title, the Anjanette Abayari-starrer, Darna: Ang Pagbabalik (I say probably since I am not sure if the one starring Nanette Medved was worse).

This movie just hits everything wrong. Everyone, I mean EVERYONE- from a campy Cherie Gil as Dr. Valentine (original villainess Valentina's daughter) who just goes hammy in her scenes as a demagogue/preacher complete with green-caped dancers and henchmen- to pretty much everyone from guards and passersby or crowds of extras who are just supposed to look up and gawk. The only one who doesn't overact is lead actress Anjanette herself- who UNDERacts. Plus, the portrayal of Darna herself is pretty stupid. She poses, she acts arrogantly and never seems to have any personality aside from smiling and looking sweet when she's being cheered by the masses. In one particular scene, she faces off with a gun-toting pretty boy named Magnum, who pretty much has shot over a dozen people (well, all of his gang). Instead of collaring this killer, Darna just exchanges some banter, then drops the guy in a garbage truck and laughs. Never mind that he gets away. How stupid is that?
Anyway, I've given up on director Peque Gallaga long ago, after crappers like his Magic Temple/Kingdom series, and all of his later Shake, Rattle and Roll films. And well, Anjanette was most probably selected for her ability to fill a bikini, not act (or speak tagalog, I think). Oh well.

Heh. Rant over. For now.

Poisonous Repast

What IS it with the cases of Food Poisoning these days??? First there was that horrible poisoning and death of over 28 students from cassava, and NOW there's this thing about a HUNDRED more people getting downed by party food in Tarlac. What is this... Deadly Food month? I honestly have never seen stuff like this before. Filipinos eat all sorts of crap each day- so why's this fad suddenly up and about?
Darn, just when you thought it was safe to eat some fishballs again...

Fruition

Tonight, I went to Comic Quest to pick up not only the week's new reads, but some page and cover samples of K.I.A. left by my one-man-band print production manager, El. I was kinda worried about how the art- much of it being heavy on black and tones- would look on the paper. Seems like my worries were for naught since the pages look simply excellent. That's what you get with quality printers and production people.
Based on how the pages and the printed covers (on the actual paper stock to be used this time) looked with the samples, the final books should look pretty slick. I just can't stop staring at them. Heh.

Anyway, I've been told that the books may be finished just before the Holy Week proper starts, but of course the first twenty copies I get will be earmarked for the members of Team K.I.A. who made this project possible. I should get down to producing the posters and any other display items I'll need for when we actually get the book on the comic racks in early April or so.

Just a little bit more. Wait for it.

Why are you eyeballing me???

I was just checking out the Angel Ace website, and then the K.I.A. cover art, and then the material for the K.I.A. webpage.
In the Angel Ace site, Kai's eyes are brown. In K.I.A., Agent K's eyes are GREEN.

GYAAAH!!!

Kai has always been an oriental/Asian character, and brown is always the base color. But then, I've always thought of her having green eyes... I love green. It's my favorite color and it's always been the color of Kai's outfits in all her incarnations and designs. I guess deep inside I've always thought that her eyes should be jade or emerald of hue.

Well, this inconsistency can easily be explained. After she was liquidated and sent to the place where she was to be 'changed', her identity was totally erased. Her fingerprints are removed and her eye color changed as well. We could also theorize that perhaps the change in eye color was caused by the process that gave Kai her heightened physical abilities and powers of regeneration. Perhaps... she's now actually part plant! Heh... Hmm. That's actually not a bad idea...

Whatever. Anyway, her peepers are green now. Moving on...

Brutal Fantasy


Rau and Tati are set to bloody your PS2 this April.

I've so far been very happy with my recent gaming acquisitions. Yeah, Champions: Return to Arms was really just more of the same, but Tekken 5 is simply awesome and Street Fighter Anniversary gives me my favorite Streetfighter III: Third Strike on the PS2. The next game I'm looking to own and enjoy is the sharp-looking Rise of the Kasai.
A sequel to The Mark of Kri, ROTK continues the story of Rau, the great Raku warrior-hero who bashed in skulls and impaled enemies with brutal efficiency. Well, he's back... sort of. ROTK is both prequel and sequel to MOK, taking place both ten years before and after the events in the first game. Apparenlty, in the present time, Rau has been mysteriously slain, so now his younger sister Tati, one of several new playable characters, takes up the quest to find out the circumstances around his death- and get some bloody payback while she's at it. Tati was a ten-year old in the first game, but in ROTK she's a hot 20-year old thong-wearing assassin chick who could give my own Agent K a lesson or two in looking mean. Anyway, the story revolves around Tati and the fact that she has been tattooed with a Mark of Kri- an evil spell that gives her great power at the cost of her soul.
Aside from the intriguing story of a whodunit-howdidit murder mystery and the internal/external struggles of the heroes, Rise of the Kasai will impress with it's odd combination of Disney-esque character designs and Conan the Barbarian-class death-dealing. Add to that stealth mechanics and a buddy-system (your character teams up with a CPU-AI controlled ally) and you get a game that mixes action and strategy in one sexy mix.

Rise of the Kasai is set for an early April release on the PS2. I can't wait to cut me some throats. Ooh, crispy!

Overtime

It's the third day of the week, and the third day we're doing overtime at The Salt Mines. It's not really that bad, but you do get positively pooped. I've had the case of the sniffles since Monday, and thankfully regular doses of vitamin C and rest have kept my nose from running completely wild. Anyway, it's great that we're able to accomplish stuff, and hopefully all this work will bear fruit later.
Still, I am DAMN glad that the Holy Week is just around the corner. Looking forward to just turning off my brain and pursuing some of my base desires... Darn, that sounds dirty. And during the Semana Santa too. Heh. Just gonna read comics, watch TV (gotta love cable) and dvds, play games, think about comics and marketing K.I.A. and all that jazz. Oh, and I'm gonna sleep. Sleep as much as I want. Mmm.

Lipad, Darna, LIPAD!


Angel Locsin dons the red bikini for the Darna TV series.

It's been revealed recently that the much-awaited Darna TV series will star actress Angel Locsin in the title role. Alessandra de Rossi as Darna's nemesis, Valentina. The series, to be shown on GMA7, will be directed by Dominic Zapanta. I had the opportunity to interview Direk Dom several months ago, and he seems to have lots of cool ideas... hopefully this will show in this ambitious series.
Darna TV will take on recent shows like the popular Mulawin (a saga of good vs evil birdmen) and perhaps Darna's most direct competition, the superhero series Krystala with Judy Ann Santos. There will be CG effects, flying, and fantastic foes from classic Darna characters to all-new enemies created just for the series.

According to Budjette, Valentina now looks like a female Omega Red, as she has but one snake on her head (instead of a nest of snakes, Medusa-style) and uses two snakes as whips. Another villain is Molekula, a shape-shifting character whom Budj describes as similar to the movie version of X-men's Mystique (is she naked, too? Heh).

I have to admit, I want to see this show, at least at the start. I wanna see if the story, effects and fights are any good.

We'll see if it flies. Heh.

The Darna TV series is set for release next month on GMA 7.

The Best Medicine

Last night I came home tired and feeling positively sick. My nose was all clogged up, My eyes ached and even my lips hurt. After having a shot of Vitamin C, I flopped into bed to get some rest since I couldn't NOT go to work the next day. Just before I nodded off, I turned on the TV and saw America's Funniest Videos on the Disney Channel. Of all the clips of people tripping, falling, slipping and sliding, the one video that had me laughing my eyes out was a really cute and funny clip entitled 'The Quad Squad'. The clip is from the home videos of Steve Mathias of his identical quadruplet baby girls, and has the doting father making faces to make his kids laugh, which they do- with identical laughs in unison. The sight of three identical babies laughing together was so infectious that I was literally laughing myself to tears (the cold helped).

Anyway, apparently the Quad Squad video won the grand prize for that season of America's Funniest Videos, something I am not surprised at. It was a nice image to see going to sleep, and perhaps it helped me recover from my stupor. Laughter really does help. Heh.

Revenge of the Trailer

Just saw the full-length trailer to Revenge of the Sith. FINALLY, the saga will be complete. The circle will be closed on this controversial trilogy. Yeah, it's a paradox. We all know it's got as much lousy acting, boring sequences and ungainly storytelling as it does cool CG effects and lightsaber duels, but we're still ALL going to watch it.
Anyway, the finale to the prequel trilogy looks to be the best, or the least worst, in that we will at last see the answers to the many questions that have been flitting since the fracas began. What will eventually push Anakin (Hayden Christensen) to the Dark Side? How did Palpatine/Sidious/The Emperor hide his presence from the Jedi even though audiences have known since Episode One? What will happen to the long-suffering Amidala (Natalie Portman) before she vanishes into the mists of obscurity into Episode VI and beyond?

ROTS promises lots of carnage- battles aplenty and a reckoning between the Jedi and the Separatist leaders Count Dooku (Christopher Lee) and the new enemy, General Grievous. Jedi being hunted down like dogs by their former allies, the Clones. And the evil Sith in action. For the action alone, I'm looking forward to this. Acting? Story? We'll see. Maybe we'll be surprised. Or maybe not.

The Sith take their revenge on May 19 in the US, with the rest of the world following (hopefully) soon after. We'll see then.

Fickle

Last night, some bug seemed to hit my little gadgets, particularly my laptop, memory cards and PC. I usually ferry files between my PC and my Mac using a combination of my communicator (O2 XDA II) and a card reader, with either a Memory Stick or my 1 Gigabyte SD Card. Well, for some reason last night my Mac suddenly started refusing particular kinds of files, and things were hanging here and there. My card reader wouldn't register on the Mac. I had to restart and reboot my computers again and again, and it was infuriating.
Perhaps it was a all caused by the heat- it was damn hot and the laptop was steaming like a toaster. I had wanted to save a bit of electricity and do without the climate control, but you really can't do that when you have computers working.
Well, today everything seems to be working fine again... perhaps, like me, the technology just had a bit of the flu. Nothing a couple of vitamins and a good night's sleep can't handle. I hope.