today was the matinee of The Chronicles of Riddick, the sequel to Pitch Black. i had heard the reviews going in... "pretentious", "takes itself too seriously", "muddled plot", "disappearing characters" etc. blah blah blah. whatever. the movie rocked! i'm glad that it was a "serious" take as opposed to some campfest like the pitiful Van Helsing. tCoR is like Dune on steriods... w/21st century special FX. granted, it ain't the best flick to come down the pike and Diesel's no theatre-trained thespian but compared to catalog of past "action heroes" like Arnold, Bruce, Sly, etc. VinD is right there. and i can accept that. and the story made perfect sense to me but it would've been nice to have it more fleshed out in a longer feature. where's the goddamn prequel they were supposed to make?!

the eberoeper take on tCoR is pretty funny to hear b/c both of them wanted the flick to be less "serious". wtf? that would've made it really stupid considering the grand scale of what happens in the movie. ugh. and ebert has lost his mind. he mentions Dame Judi Dench's character "disappearing" from the flick. wtf again? i think he must've stepped out after the opening credits and returned during the closing credits... b/c she's there ALL THE TIME when they cut to her scenes. christ, roger. another nice aspect of the flick is Alexa Davalos and if only she could've had more to do! damn. she was a hottie in Angel as the "electric girl" and she's the hottie "tough girl" in tCoR. i think they missed the boat on the character development there considering she was key to a Riddick subplot and then they kinda pushed that whole thing to the side to wrap up the movie under 2 hours. drag. ah well, i enjoyed the movie immensely. and the "firecats" in the flick are sweet!

finally caught the extended trailer for AVP and altho it's probably some really stupid plot, the movie looks awesome. being a big, big Predator fan, i'm looking forward to this one... much more than that suckfest Jason vs. Freddie. i can only hope that AVP is 10x the flick that shitburner was. at least AVP features Lance Henriksen, the stalwart of horror b-flicks!

picked up some more media goodies today incl. DVDs of Lucio Fulci's Zombie, The Simple Life, and The Incredible Adventures of Wallace & Gromit. all $5 each. also nabbed a few games: Harvest Moon (GB), Smashing Drive (GBC), and Pokemon Gold (GB). Gamestop had the buy 2 used get one free sale ending today so i took advantage of that. took home Paycheck, Runaway Jury, and School of Rock from BB. all in all it was a pretty good day... except for the shitass, cockwad sunday drivers littered about the streets and that 4hr nap i fell into when i got home. dammit.