I caved. I came in today. Damned puritan work ethic!

It’s a good thing, too, since Yanick called in sick this morning. So far I have made myself two cups of tea, fretted a great deal about all the housework that I am not doing while sitting at my desk, and posted about some really great books on ‘s LJ post about some stuff she read. Today is one of those days when I crave the mindless delights of playing Yoshi’s Island on the GameBoy Advance. I spent a few moments contemplating the technological miracle of an invisible GameBoy, like Wonder Woman might have had, except how could you see the screen? So then I thought that a GameBoy with perfect Predator-like camouflage ability would allow me to play at my desk with impunity! Which brings me to my next point…

will be sad to hear that ‘AvP’ was, in fact, rubbish. Total rubbish.

Alien vs Predator spoilers ahead!

The best part of the film is the Predators, mostly because they don’t speak – dialogue is really where the movie falls down. As soon as one of the characters opens their mouths, you can almost visualize them spitting out the millions that their words are stealing from the opening weekend box office totals.

They spent too long trying (vainly) to make us care about the obviously dead-meat human characters, which severely screwed up the pacing of the film. All of the poor schmucks who went on the expedition to the frozen Pyramid of Doom, all died in about the blink of an eye in badly-lit, rushed scenes. There was hardly any of the delicious tension and terrifyingly claustrophobic cinematography that made the first two Alien films excellent. Not enough facial close-ups, bad framing, poor sound mixing. I could go on, but I won’t. It hurts.

The good bits were, surprisingly, anything computer generated: the flashback to mankind being taught civilization by the Predators, the temple being overrun by Aliens, and the Alien/Predator fights were pretty damn good. There was also one – count it, ONE – good scene with the human actors, where a guy is alone in the camp, you sense he’s about to become a nice, gooey nesting ground for a chestburster, and then it turns out the slithering noises coming from below are being made by… a penguin.

So, yeah. A penguin and an 8 foot tall dude with no lines wearing full body makeup, dreadlocks and a lot of metal steal the show.

Bad sign. Bad movie.

Final note: The tagline “whoever wins, we lose” is a complete and utter lie. In the context of the film, the message is clearly “Predators are honourable and powerful fighters who gave us civilization and we once worshiped them; Aliens use our bodies as bassinets and then discard the stinking carcasses”. Stupid marketing makes me nuts.

Tonight JVL and I are going out for a romantic dinner for two at the Royal York Hotel’s premier dining lounge, EPIC, where I hope that the food will be tasty, but not so plentiful that I waste any of it or run out of room in my tummy by the second course, and that the atmosphere will be swanky and ‘Days of Our Lives’-esque, but not so snotty that we feel underdressed / uncomfortable / hated.