At an Antarctica research site, the discovery of an alien craft leads to a confrontation between graduate student Kate Lloyd and scientist Dr. Sander Halvorson.

The initial plot is nothing revolutionary; we’ve all seen the ‘something weird is found in the middle of nowhere and we want to check it out’ plot be used a million times, but the way it’s portrayed and the creatures, with a Lovecraftian look to them, make it worthwhile.

This movie ends where the 1982 The Thing starts. I don’t remember the original film by John Carpenter, either because I didn’t watch it, or because I repressed the memory of having watched it. Carpenter’s films have the knack to be either very good or incredibly bad (Ghosts of Mars, anyone?) – there’s no middle ground with his stuff.

I plan see it soon; I want to know how the rest of the story goes, and from what I hear, the original The Thing qualifies for the better half of Carpenter’s movies.

The Best

• Inception. The most original movie I’ve seen in a while, with a great cast, a good director, great special effects, awesome story. It was the most enjoyable movie among those I’ve watched this year.

The Good or Even Great

• 500 Days of Summer – simple story . not a love story, but a story about love.
• Alice - I usually prefer Tim Burton’s darker toned movies, but actually enjoyed this one.
• Daybreakers - In the future, humans all all but extinct – we’re just vampire food.
• Iron Man 2 – Popcorn fun
• REC – Pretty cool spanish movie, with zombies in Barcelona!
• Red – wrote about it recently. good cast, funny and entertaining story.
• Salt - Angelina Jolie kicking ass in a movie with a decent story. Still think she needs to gain a few kilograms though.
• Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World – *the* geek movie of the year
• The Sorcerer’s Apprentice – shut off brain. eat popcorn. enjoy.
• The Town – I was surprised at how good this was. Favourite part (no spoilers): the smiling ‘nuns’.

The OK

• Coisa Ruim – portuguese movie. better than antecipated
• Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinossaurs – Some funny stuff, but it’s definitely no Pixar movie.
• Prince of Persia – where were the stakes at the bottom of a precipice? huh? where?! it’s not prince of persia if he doesn’t fall on them at least once.
• REC2 – dumbest. military. ever. gets extra points for the plot twist and also gets the award for ‘most original zombie killing ever’.
• Resident Evil: Resurrection – nice fight scenes, not much content. The usual for RE movies. Next!
• Terminator: Salvation – At least they changed the actor that played John Connor. The one in the previous movie sucked.

The Bad or Meh

• Clash of the Titans
• The Last Airbender
• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

The So Bad It’s Good

• Machete - bloody fun for everyone. Probably the movie that made me laugh the most this year.

The Ugly

• Predators – I keep waiting for the day they’ll make a new, decent movie with Predator. Although this was better than AvP, or the cinematic abortion that was AvP2, this wasn’t it.
• Wolverine – I literally fell asleep in the middle of the movie and Gambit, who I like, had already made his appearence by then. It’s *that* bad, yeah.

I’m probably forgetting some movie along the way, but this was mostly it.

‘Red’ is essentially an action packed movie, with some impossible action scenes (funny stuff, which makes them alright), and with a brilliant cast: Bruce Willis, John Malcovich, Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren. Two Oscar winners and a nominee, if anyone cares about that sort of thing, are the protagonists of this action movie.

IMDb’s summary (because I’m particularly lazy as I write this):

“When his idyllic life is threatened by a high-tech assassin, former black-ops agent Frank Moses reassembles his old team in a last ditch effort to survive.”

Highlight of ‘Red’: Academy Award Helen Mirren shooting a BFG (Big Fucking Gun). Like a crazy person.

We also watched ‘Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World’, and the consensus was: it’s a must for geeks.

So, if you’re into fighting games or video games in general, anime, manga, dance dance revolution, or other geeky stuff, and are looking for an extremely weird and funny story with a bit (or a lot) of those, this is a movie for you.

Also copy-pasting IMDb’s summary:

“Scott Pilgrim must defeat his new girlfriend’s seven evil exes in order to win her heart.”

The movie gets bonus points for a scene that reminded me of Shoujo Kakumei Utena a lot.

Were they popcorn movies? Yes.

Were they entertaining? Hell yeah.

To celebrate kitten and I are going to re-watch it (me for the gazillionth time, but I love it so I don’t care) tonight, as soon as he gets back from Rome.

Also, check out this extremely old school ‘trailer’ for ESB.

Are you celebrating this cinematic masterpiece’s anniversary? If so, how?

It wasn’t just intended as criticism, but also as an attempt to clarify that a lot of these lists are very retarded, and far away from the truth for a lot of women. This is, however, written in my point of view, so obviously what I mention here may vary from person to person, because we’re not all the same.

As such, and before I start making the list(s), I will clarify, that I believe most women would be happy if you would cook them a yummy dinner, made a nice dessert, got her a flower or two, and surprised her with a romantic candlelight dinner at home. In my view, that shows that you care a lot more than hundreds of euros worth of gifts, or going to an amazingly expensive restaurant does. (Note that this does not apply if you’re dating Miss Shallow, in which case you will have to sell your internal organs to be able to afford to buy her everything she wants. :p) Though I’ve tried keeping in mind more affordable gifts, this list has gifts with a wide range of prices.

So, let’s move on to this geek girl’s guide to Valentine’s gifts for geeky girls. Read the rest of the post after the break.

First of all, an easy way for you to give her something she actually wants is asking her. Unless you want/need it to be a huge surprise, or already have a 100% certainty that you got her something she’ll like, just ask her. Note that in most cases I’m not indicating a specific item, but a type of item, not just because I’m not sponsored, but because I’m lazy and would prefer skipping the whole browsing Google for hours to find products.

I’m assuming here that you have some knowledge about what kind of thing she likes and doesn’t like.

Books/Comics

There’s a hype surrounding vampires going on ( No, I won’t be recommending Twilight. ), and if she likes that kind of thing and still does not own a Bram Stoker’s Dracula, you might want to consider that. It’s a love story, it has proper vampires (the vampire, in fact), and it’s a classic. If your geek girl is anything like me, she likes the more old-fashioned vampires, and has developed allergy to the new shines-in-daylight-and-is-sort-of-a-vegetarian vampires. Another option is Fevre Dream, which doesn’t have a love story in it, but since it’s a less known vampire novel, she probably doesn’t own already.

If she likes fantasy, and is not horribly impressed with violence, and likes a good story, I recommend George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, or, if she stays away from brutality, Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy. If she’s into more ‘pew pew’ fantasy, Dragonlance’s Chronicles trilogy (there’s probably a box set somewhere) is an option. I won’t recommend The Lord of the Rings here because there are hardly any women to relate to there, and at least I find that very unappealing and couldn’t go past one third of Fellowship of the Ring.

Science Fiction-wise, she might like Arthur C. Clarke’s Rama, or, my favourite of his (and less known) Songs of a Distant Earth. If she’s a Star Wars fan, I’d recommend Timothy Zahn’s The Empire Trilogy, which has a couple of very strong and hardly helpless female characters – Princess Leia, and Mara Jade. If she’s into Star Trek, I recommend Peter David’s Star Trek: New Frontier series – humoristic, cool characters ( Soleta rocks \m/ ), and it pretty much stands alone from most Star Trek events, so she doesn’t need to have watched the whole thing to know what they’re talking about there.

Comics-wise, I’d recommend Brian K. Vaughan’s Y: The Last Man series because it’s made of awesome and doesn’t fall into the superhero thing. If she does like superheroes but is tired of the regular stuff, Runaways Volume 1 might be a cool choise.

Movies/Series

Several options here, as always, depending on what she might like.

The original Star Wars trilogy on DVD, if she doesn’t own it.

If she’s a trekkie, you might prefer giving her a boxed set of Star Trek movies, or her favourite Trek show in a box set.

The complete Buffy boxed set. I own one of these, which I bought as a gift for myself because I loved the show, and I’ve watched a lot of it more than once. There’s also the Angel series boxed set, that she might like if she’s an Angel fan (or of David Boreanaz, heh… -ahem-).

Bram Stoker’s Dracula – for all the reasons stated on the book section.

Blade Runner because it’s one of the best scifi classics.

Other cool shows for geeks would be Bones, and Fringe, despite not being ‘too geeky’. There are a million different shows and movies to chose from.

Music

Musical taste is probably what varies the most, so I won’t give specific bang names. If you want to give her something musical, find out what she likes, what she still doesn’t own, and get her that.

If you want a more original option, and you’re set on going for the musical gift, a nice music box might be a cool gift. Preferably one themed after some geeky universe that she’s really into, or a pretty one which plays one of her favourite songs. I couldn’t find one example for this, but I’m sure there are some around.

Technology

Does she own a game console or a PC? You might want to like to ask her what game she might like for it. The other option is, since there are more and more sequels to games these days, to get her a sequel to a game she loved (check the reviews for it, though, since some sequels may have quality issues), and surprise her in the process.

If she doesn’t own a game console, but has shown interest in one, there are a ton of console+games bundles around. You just have to figure out which one suits her best on your own.

In case she needs a new cellphone or is tired of her current one, she might like one. You might prefer staying away from the many not-that-great pink phones that show up around this time, since a lot of women don’t like pink. Figure out what specs suit her needs better, and get her one that looks good and has those specs. If there’s such a phone in her favourite colour, go for it.

If she needs a PC or a laptop. Analyze what she needs it for: is she wanting portability above all? Get her a netbook. There are several models to choose from, in various colours. Same advice as the one I gave for the cellphone colour here. And if in doubt, ask her. If she’s looking for a computer for other reasons, you should make the best choice for her needs. Which may be tricky, okay, but I’m not going to advice on specific gaming computers, or ‘just-for-chatting-and-browsing’ computers. Do some investigation and decide based on that.

If she’s into photography, you might want to give her a digital camera. Depending on how nerdy she is about it, you can either give her a DSLR, where she can change the lenses and such, or a compact that’s not as good as a DSLR, but almost, and doesn’t have some of the hassles of the DSLR cameras (for instance, since I’m not the most patient person in the universe, the later  option would apply better), like the G11, or the L3X.

There’s also geeky jewelry to chose from, if she likes to wear that kind of thing, or geeky t-shirts/other clothing items, and a million other choices, but that concludes a list with many different possibilities that may serve as a reference for you guys (or girls) dating a geeky girl.

Mostly because I can’t be arsed thinking of more stuff.

Oh, and because not every list is poorly made, check out this list over at Wired – 10 Ways to a Geeky Girl’s Heart. Some nice ideas in there.

Daybreakers - proper vampires for a change.

Alice in Wonderland – Tim Burton. Need I say more?

Clash of the Titans – pew pew, Spartan style?

Iron Man 2 – I’m not the biggest fan of the character, but the first movie was okay.

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time – I used to play the original game and liked it, depite all the horrible deaths I suffered. So unless I hear it’s horrible, I’ll be watching it.

Salt – I’m a fan of Angelina Jolie.Will want to watch.

Mute – A movie I hadn’t heard about until I read this list. The concept is leaving me curious, though, so it has a spot on my list of ‘to-watch’.

Need to watch the previous Harry Potter before I can happily head off to watch Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part I. Then again the movie is only coming out in November, so I’ll have the time to catch up.

Afraid of waching the A-Team movie. The show was pretty cool at the time, and I’m not sure the actors will be able to pull it off. Where’s the original B. A. Barracus? I pity the foo!  >.<

Also uncertain if Tron Legacy will be able to like up to the first movie, at least a tiny bit.

A question is left unanswered: Why is Machete not on the list? It will surely be very entertaining to say the least.

So, what movies are you wanting to watch next year?

Sort of related to this matter: as someone who buys the occasional movie DVD when I find a nice and decently priced one at the store, I can say that there’s nothing that annoys me more than the crappy anti-piracy video clip that you can’t skip and which lasts an eternity to end. Hello, Anti-Piracy people? If I’d pirated the damned movie I wouldn’t be watching this. If I am it’s because I purchased the movie at hand and if I did, I DON’T WANT TO HAVE TO WATCH THAT CRAP. Mkay? I’m not the person you should be aiming for.

BioWare’s approach to fight piracy is one I agree with. It’s the  people making the games, movies, music and other means of entertainment that need to make the effort to make a product so good that people will want to buy it for the price it’s tagged.

I went to the Óbidos Medieval Market on Saturday. They’ve extended the event’s area quite a bit – other than the stuff inside the castle walls, they’ve added a Tournament area (was already up last year, but smaller) and a Medieval Camp. Plus there’s also a tavern there now, which was packed with people. The tournament was a lot better than last year’s, and included a Joust. Though I had some trouble seeing all that was happening in the arena, one of the Knights and his horse impressed me a lot with some decent acting.  They managed to pretend quite convincingly that the horse was struck with a sword and fell to the ground wounded. The only negative criticism I have to do to the tournament event, is that they need to add a lot more seated spots. We had to climb some hills so we could see anything at all.

There were a lot of places where to get food, however there was also a lack of seated spots. We ended up eating under some wooden floors, in a place with some cement steps. The advantage was that we were less vulnerable to the cold and wind. We ate some yummy chouriço bread, plus some roasted kebab and quail. The event is attracting more and more people from all over the country with each passing year, and they’ll really need to expand the premises even more. I’ll post some event photos here soon.

One thing I think would be nice for them to have there would a stand where you could purchase books related to the medieval period, or fantasy novels, since they are so tightly connected in a lot of cases. Of course this depends not just from the organization itself, but from the possible interest from publishers and bookstores.

I was going to meet a friend who lives near-ish Óbidos, and whom I haven’t seen in months, but unfortunately the friends we went with wanted to come back to Lisbon so we’d go to the movies. I ended up postponing my meeting to this weekend with any luck – my friend told me he might come shopping to Lisbon. If not, I can always go meet him there a couple weeks from now. Either that or one day we’ll pass each other by in the street and not recognize each other.

The movie we watched was ‘Kung Fu Panda’, which is a decent enough animation movie. I’m also kind of wanting to watch ‘Wanted’, but after watching the trailer again I can’t help but wonder if I’ll like it. See, it supposedly based on a comic book miniseries by Mark Millar that I enjoyed, but the trailer didn’t have much of it in there. Plus they won’t have even 10% of the swearing that was in the comic (it had a LOT of it – think ‘Sopranos’), which I thought was part of what made it more interesting that most comics around. [ Speaking of an Angelina Jolie movie, congrats to both her and Brad Pitt for their newborn twins. ]

I finally managed to finish ‘A Clash of Kings’. Now I’m wondering what to read in parallel with ‘Watchmen’ when I’m home. So many books to chose and so little ideas about what to chose next…

How was your weekend?

Yesterday I watched the first movie, YOU ARE (NOT) ALONE, and I loved it. I had refrained from watching the anime again so the good memories I had of it would not be ruined – I’ve watched episodes of shows I used to love as a kid, and ended up being very disappointed. Rebuild of Evangelion is the perfect chance to (sort of) rewatch Eva, and avoid the possibility of disappointment. Not only because the animation is improved, but because Gainax managed to get most of the original Evangelion cast back, and this makes Rebuild not a simple ‘milking the cow’ kind of thing. Oh and even though you may remember the show, you’ll still get a couple of surprises in the movie, especially the end (spoilers for the rest of the sentence), where Kaworu Nagisa appears *squee*.

I’ll stop yapping now and leave you with a short video clip with scenes of the movie, which contains one of the new music themes made for Rebuild of Evangelion – Angel of Doom. Lyrics after the cut. And no, I’m not turning this into a weblog where I post the best lyrics EVAR!!!11 – these are short and capture the sense of impending doom you feel throughout the show.

“The Beginning of the end, dark as clouds of scorn
Pouring out like prophets of doom they do forewarn
The Beginning of the end, dark as clouds of scorn

Angels of Doom come calling, with no mercy
No fear, no heart, no judgement, no clemency

Angels of Doom, like evil messengers deliver misery.”

(Oh, Ayanami Rei remains my favourite. She’s every bit as huggable as I remember. Must do some fanart!)