As an overdose of eye candy, Ultraviolet can be marginally recommended as the second-half of a double-feature with Aeon Flux. Both films are disposable adolescent fantasies featuring a butt-kicking babe (in this case, the svelte and sexy Milla Jovovich) in a dystopian future, and both specialize in the kind of barely-coherent, video-game storytelling that's constantly overwhelmed by an over-abundance of low-budget CGI. Director Kurt Wimmer fared much better with his earlier film Equilibrium, but he's trying for a lively comic-book vibe here (beginning with Hulk-like opening credits) with a digitally enhanced, Tron-like color palette. It largely suits this late-21st century story of a "blood war" between the ultra-violent Violet (Jovovich), member of a vampire-like group of resistance fighters infected with a man-made virus called the Hemophage, and the human Vice Cardinal Daxus (Nick Chinlund), who's determined to eliminate Violet's kind once and for all. Wimmer takes all of this way too seriously, crafting a plot involving Violet's rescue of a human clone boy (Cameron Bright) that's intended as an homage to John Cassevetes' 1980 drama Gloria, but Wimmer's good intentions are mostly lost in a repetitive series of chaotically choreographed fight scenes, mostly involving the tight-bodied Jovovich wiping out dozens of armor-clad enemies. It's all too numbingly hectic to qualify as a satisfying movie, but sci-fi buffs should give it a look anyway, if only to see how locations in Shanghai and Hong Kong contribute to the film's futuristic design.--Jeff Shannon

asin: B000FGGE5Y binding: DVD list price: $14.94 USD amazon price: $13.49 USD other availability:

Posted by Vladimir Fri, 10/05/2007 - 23:58

 

Chapter 06

Several weeks had elapsed since the conversation in Reginald Clarke's studio. The spring was now well advanced and had sprinkled the meadows with flowers, and the bookshelves of the reviewers with fiction. The latter Ernest turned to good account, but from the flowers no poem blossomed forth.

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Lost in Transylvania

May 12, 2007 (The Guardian / Gavin Bell) -- Mati the blacksmith was worried. A Romanian gypsy, he was usually in lively good humour, but today he was distraught. Recently men from a television company had come to his village, offering to install satellite dishes for free, and his daughter had taken one. Now he had been sent a bill for renting it, and he didn't have the money - or a television. His daughter had gone to work in Hungary and taken it with her. So he feared the worst. Would the police take him to prison?

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'30 Days of Night' a good laugh

November 8, 2007 (The Arctic Sounder / Alex DeMarban) -- Barrow residents are laughing off their latest brush with fame -- a vampire movie set in the Arctic city -- though many haven't seen it.

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Scared

words echo endlessly
on a sea of pain
blood red
hurt
it goes on forever
never ending
always the same
hurting worse
each day
the pain grows
slowly becoming unbearable
an ache
throbbing and harsh
growing worse
pounding out its existance
on the very essence of being
screaming
hating without thought
... ... ...
I don't know how to continue
to go on
I can't find the words for it
silence
HELP ME!!!

Raevynn
October 11, 2001

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The Crimson Quill [vol. 1998]

A collection of poetry and prose submitted to VO in 1998.

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