Books Lying Open
¤ A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin
¤ A Clash of Kings, George R. R. Martin
¤ Shelters of Stone, Jean M. Auel
¤ The Complete Tales and Poems, Edgar Allen Poe
¤ Abarat, Clive Barker
¤ Hearts in Atlantis, Steven King
¤ Everything's Eventual, Steven King

Soul-Devouring Worry
¤ My planned quick mention of Underworld turning into a multi-page discussion of a movie I'd just as soon forget.

Curse of the Day:
¤ May you wish the inevitable lethal cancer would hurry up and afflict your downstairs neighbor so she'll stop goddamned smoking on her back patio at night, thus sending clouds of the stinking poison into the night, thus forcing you to close the backdoor even when it's hot and the fan is blowing in life-giving cool air.

Phrase of the Moment:
¤ Phrase: "mostly".
¤ Usage: "They mostly come out at night.  Mostly."
¤ Synonyms: N/A
¤ Deviations: Most any qualifying word you can use in a sentence, and then repeat afterwards for extra emphasis.  Eg: "probably," "sometimes," and so on.
¤ Origin: Newt's famous line in Aliens.
¤ Notes: Cribbed from Cartman who cribbed it from Aliens, this word and it's deviations spice up most any conversation.  Malaya and I have developed it to a science, where one of us will speak a viable sentence, and then after a momentary pause we'll both repeat the repeatable word in almost perfect harmony.  Yes, we realize how sickeningly cutesy this is. 

The best usage yet? When I said, after we saw the results of this boxing match: "Who kicked Oscar de la Hoya's ass tonight?
*pause*
*M and F speak together*
"Mosley." -- September 18, 2003

¤ After I talked about possibly getting a new kitty on Monday, events have transpired to make that look like a distinct possibility in the immediate future. I've been talking with Malaya all week 

On Friday we (Malaya/me) went by a big PetSmart over in Walnut Hills, after seeing the decidedly mediocre Underworld (review and discussion of that to follow) and looked at the kitties they had for adoption.  It's not some kitten-mill outpost; they display kitties from the local SPCA shelter, of all ages.  Mostly younger ones that have been adopted from here or there, or older ones who were abandoned or whatever.  All spayed and neutered and up to date on their shots, etc.

And they had several that were pretty, but the one we liked the most was our favorite due to her behavior.  She was a small silver tabby, just 3 months, but she was so game.  While we were watching she was batting fiercely at her dangling play toy thingie, and once we moved it she was just so into chasing and attacking it.  We got them to let her out and while walking around the little kitty area there she was just so bold and fearless, rubbing our legs, chasing the mousie as Malaya confused her by moving it around a scratching post, and so on.  Uber cute, and we liked her spirit a lot.

She's a bit younger than were were thinking, and looked so tiny compared to the overgrown Dusty we now share a condo with, but we liked her more and more as we played with her.  The temporary name she wears is Kenya, but we'll be changing that to something better.  (Would they dare name a black cat Kenya? Probably not.) I'm partial to the names of lesser-known deities, like ones from Greek or Egyptian or Sumerian mythology, and Malaya knows a lot of those types of names and has a lot of books on them, so hopefully we can find a name that's both catchy and appropriate.

We're not sure we're getting her yet, but we're going to go look at the larger SPCA adoption center tomorrow morning, and if we don't see a kitty that just steals our hearts, we might go back for little Kenya.  We're taking the kitty carrier with us, so if we do decide on one, we won't have any excuses not to get her.

And yes, nearly infinite pictures and disgustingly-cute kitten stories will follow, with any luck. In fact, our shopping list for the new pet stands at:

• Kitten chow.
• Canned cat food. (Dusty only gets dry, but he's fat, and the new one will need to grow.)
• Mousie on a string type toys.
• Bigger kitty carrier.
• Jumbo pack of AA batteries, for the digicam.

¤ Speaking of kitties, there was some humor with Dusty on Friday night.  Malaya and me were lazing in bed a bit, just talking and trading foot rubs and such, and of course Dusty came walking in and leapt up on the bed and generally made a nuisance of himself, before settling down at the head of the bed, where the pillows would usually go.  Except that I had one at the bottom to lean against the iron bed frame, and the other was under Malaya's arm, as she was leaning sideways.

Anyway, Dusty was lying on the sheet and leaning back, stretching, etc, and eventually stuck his head through the bedframe.  The head and foot of the bed is a wrought iron frame with straight vertical bars about three inches apart. He got his head through easily at an angle, but then of course turned it and when he tried to sit up he was stuck by his cheekbones.  His predictably-panicked kicking and meowing was quite amusing to his evil human owners, but he got unstuck before I could even reach over to turn him sideways.

Minor event, but we got a good laugh out of it at least.  And if pets can't amuse us with their minor misfortunes, what's the point in having them around?  Or waxing the floors before you call the dog for supper?

¤ This has nothing to do with anything, but it amused me.  Friday night I got the hankering for a crunchy snack and a soda, and since I've got Pepsi and Ritz crackers and a new jar of spreadable cheese, that seemed like a good idea.  Malaya was sitting at her desk next to me when I got it out, and looked wistful and made smacking noises, so of course I shared my crackers with her.  The funny part was that she was playing some D2 and was a bit out of easy reaching range, since I was working here and she was playing and didn't want to take her eyes off of the screen to lean over.

So the solution I hit upon was to spread on the dollop of cheese with the butter knife, and then use the adhesive nature of the sticky cheese to lift the cracker over to her.  So I held the knife, and on the blade (well, what blade a butter knife has) was the cracker with cheese, stuck firmly by the cheese.  It was sort of fun, more fun than just hand feeding her crackers anyway.  Felt a bit like a pirate, eating everything with a dagger.

It did make me want a wild animal though, like a lion or a wolf or a raven, to feed gobbets of blood-dripping raw meat to.  With a dagger.  I'm not sure Malaya would go for that though; she's not eating much meat lately, and when she does she'd prefer it decently cooked.  But since it would make me happy, how can she possibly resist?

¤ And since I posted a couple yesterday, and it's an easy way to fill up some space on days I haven't been interested in surfing, here's another reader mail, one generated by yesterday's blog.

I just went back and read that Canine Mortician (good one, Malaya) article on diabloii.net, and man was it funny. I think I've read it before, but I didn't actually pay attention because it was just another b.net idiot rambling on. I love the way he tried to justify cheating with the eloquence of Bush trying to justify the Iraq Attaq..er, Attack. I haven't played on b.net since around April, and it's sad to be reminded of how stupid people are. I guess I kind of hoped that they grew up while I was gone. Ahh, how naive I was.

I haven't been on B.net like, this year, but I keep in touch with the happy fun type of people there via the emails and forums posts I am exposed to at the D2 site.  We can all keep hoping that they'll grow up, but it's just never happened, and probably never will. Individuals grow up, but there is a constant influx of noobs and bored kids who lack for parental supervision and get to act out in ways online that they could never hope to get away with in real life.  And not to get all analytical or philosophical, but it only takes a few annoying people to make a real (negative) difference in anything.  To quote myself, here's what I said in the intro to my last Decahedron column, the one about the most annoying types of people on Battle.net,

The squeaky wheel theorem applies to this topic, since while most people out there are pretty cool, you don't notice them, since they aren't annoying idiots.  You do notice the annoying idiots though, and remember them, and two of them in a chat room of 50 people can leave 48 people pissed and vowing to never get online again.  Actually it would do that to 49 people, since each of the annoying idiots would think the other one was the squeaky wheel, while never suspecting that they themselves were half the problem, and had just been wished death by nearly four dozen complete strangers.

This reminds me of an email I got a week ago, when I posted a comment in a news post on the D2 site to the tune of, "When have there not been hordes of angry whiners on the B.net forums?"  I didn't think it was exactly going out on a limb; what with the B.net forums being notorious for trolls and flaming and intemperate fans who think Blizzard owes them a perfectly bug-free patch with every possible feature in it, and owed it to them about 3 months ago.  And they might have a point with D2, what with the v1.10 patch about 2 years late, but they say that about every Bliz game, usually in very poor English with lots of bad words.

My news post generated an email of complaint though, from a guy who chose to take my meaning as "everyone on the bnet forums is an angry whiner" and wanted me to post a retraction or correction or something.  Unfortunately, he was an actual adult, and used proper grammar and all of that stuff, so I couldn't just ridicule him, and had to reply in rational form pointing out basically what I said in the previous paragraph.

Well, I didn't have to do anything, it's not like I am anything other than a glorified volunteer on the D2 site and being as I pretty much do everything there at this point, it's not like Elly would discipline or fire me no matter what I said to a reader in email.

I would like this story to wrap up nicely, but it was about a week ago, and I devoted very few mental resources to the entire exchange.  He did write back sounding less angry but still wanting me to make some sort of change, and I read that and promptly forgot the whole thing.  Until right now...

I have butchered this story, and despite the fact that I brought it up, let us never speak of it again.

Malaya and I went to see it Friday, at the 1:55pm showing.  That was the first showing on opening day, but we weren't exactly ravenous to see it, we just had some interest and hadn't been to a movie for a few weeks. We figured it would be sorta dumb, but would have some good vampire vs. werewolf battle scenes, all ripped straight from The Matrix, stylistically.

And we pretty much got what we expected, though I was disappointed in the quality of the writing and direction, and a lot of the choices they made in how they set up the world and plot.  Malaya seemed less picky about/disappointed in the overall quality of it, but I don't think either of us exactly liked it.  It wasn't like I wanted to walk out, but it was just okay at best, and frequently "oh god that's stupid" at worst.  For me, anyway.  It feels worse in my memory as I think about it now, so this will probably be a more negative discussion than I would have launched into the minute I walked out of the theater.

There are some spoilers in this discussion, but not any major ones, and nothing about the actual plot twist ending, which is somewhat of a surprise.

As I said, it wasn't good, but it wasn't all that bad.  I did want a fast forward button a few times early on, when there were some long and deadly stretches of dialogue, and there were very few things I would have rewinded to watch again.  Probably the only one for sure was along speech by a character in which he tried to explain how vampires and werewolves got started, and why one character is so important due to his genetics.

My take on it was that one immortal guy had 2 sons, and one founded the vampire line, while the other the werewolves.  Malaya didn't think that was it at all, and thought that while it was the vampire origin in one son, the other was just human but a carrier for the genetic oddity that's so important in the movie's plot.  And that there was never any explanation given as to how werewolves came to be.  It was unclear in any event, and I'd watch that part again just to see if it made any more sense.  Other than that, once was plenty for Underworld.  I don't regret watching it, and I guess it was worth the $5.75 I paid for my matinee ticket, but part of that is because we had a coupon for a free hotdog and Slurpee, and that food that would cost about $2.50 at any K-Mart in the US was $7.50 at the movie.  Not that we would have gotten it if not for the coupon, but anyway...

Critics are mostly in agreement with me. They don't think it's Cold Creek Manor awful, but the current tally on Rotten Tomatoes is 29% positive, which I'd say is about right.  I didn't hate it, but I'd give it like a C-, which is below a recommend from me, and that's almost entirely since there was some interesting action and nice visuals and nice set design. How to define the mediocrity of Underworld?

• It wasn't a bad movie that was indifferent and sloppy.
• It wasn't a terrible movie that was the best it could be.
• It was a potentially very good movie that didn't come anywhere near living up to it's potential.

The disappointment I feel at the fact that this movie had the elements to be really good, but never lived up to any of them. I saw Blade a couple of weeks ago and while that was not very good, probably worse than Underworld, it did the best it could.  It was saddled with the inflexible Wesley Snipes, a female lead with no acting ability whatsoever, an utterly ridiculous climax, and never felt like more than a shiny B-movie, but it had more energy and better action and smarter special effects.  Underworld could have been borderline great, but due to poor writing and directing, it didn't come anywhere near its potential.

They had a lot of plot ideas, a lot of battle ideas, and a lot of potentially-interesting characters, but they just couldn't put it all together. There were a lot of scenes that did nothing, and a lot of great scenes that should have been in it didn't make it into the movie at all.  I also didn't really care for their  depiction of werewolves or vampires, in terms of how they tweaked the traditional mythology for the movie.

Underworld is really a story of lost opportunities, metaphorically speaking.

The world looked cool, but it had no variety; it was always dark tunnels and dripping water, and everyone in it wore black all the time.  Of course the Vampires did, but so did the Werewolves.  And since the vampires were really just humans with no special abilities other than being able to jump down a long way without being injured on impact, and the werewolves looked like normal humans until they went into werewolf form, most of the movie was made up of people in black shooting guns at other people in black in poorly-lit sets.

The plot of the movie had promise.  Not the whole werewolf/vampire aspect so much, but the human betrayal and trust and deception stuff.  There are double crosses galore, relationships built on centuries of lies, traitors to the cause, and the ever-present movie thing, where forbidden love conquers all obstacles. There was also a huge backstory to the plot, with centuries of deceits and events that created the situation we saw today, and some of those are hinted at, but it's never really developed, other than one flashback sequence.

As for the missed opportunities, I spent much of the movie thinking about how it could have been better.  The direction was very mediocre, and the world was very unrealistic. After an opening battle scene that begins in a subway station but quickly descends into the depths of the sewers, there is virtually never another scene in the entire movie that involves any non-combatants. It's all vampires and werewolves, battling it out with no humans having any clue about them at any time, and never even any innocent bystanders or nosy cops. All too convenient, really; the mark of lazy film makers.

Things that you'd expect and desire in a vampire/werewolf movie that never showed up:

• There were zero scenes of werewolves stalking humans for prey, or being terrorizing.
• There were zero scenes of vampires stalking or seducing or anything; they just hung out in a big mansion, or went out to hunt/kill werewolves.
• There was one shot of the full moon ever, and it lasted about 5 seconds.
• There was one shot of a vampire enjoying the taste of blood, and it was not a good traditional stalking type of thing.
• There was never any shot of a cross in the entire movie, either used against the vampires or tried to be used and failed since it didn't really work against them.
• It was always night, apparently, since there's never a shot of a vampire getting into a coffin, or worrying about the dawn, or waiting for sunset. And never any hint of the werewolves taking advantage of the old daylight weakness to make an attack.

Basically all of the good horror elements of the very rich vampire and werewolf mythos were entirely discarded.  Neither type of creature was every cool, other than having some cool weaponry and clothing, and the nice gothic architecture of the vampires. In fact I couldn't see any real reason to want to be either type of them; they had immortality (even the werewolves, apparently)

Vampires:

• Didn't fly.
• Didn't shape change into anything (rats, bats, mist, etc).
• They reflected in mirrors, (though I don't think this was every mentioned at all.)
• They didn't need blood straight from people or show any special desire to have blood at all (other than apparently drinking it from blood banks).
• They didn't have any mental powers or the ability to mesmerize.
• Didn't sleep in coffins (aside from two ancient, hibernating vampire elders) or grave dirt.
• There was never any mention of garlic, crucifixes, them needing to be invited inside before they could enter a house, and so on.
• Were created by a single bite from any other vampire, with the change coming almost immediately.
• They couldn't even see in the dark, which I found especially silly for so called "creatures of the night."  This was highlighted by a ridiculous "is that a werewolf coming up the black tunnel?" scene near the end of the movie.

In short they threw out the entire vampire mythology, other than some mentions of blood drinking, and those seemed to be very optional.  The vampires could fall from a great height and walk away, and once or twice one of them stuck to a wall/ceiling, but there was no real logic or intelligence to when they did it. In short they were humans with guns and black leather who died when shot with special photosynthetic bullets.  They showed no superhuman strength, no speed, no cunning or aristocratic guile, and used guns (with silver bullets) as their not-very-effective anti-werewolf weapons.

Werewolves:

• Could change from human to werewolf at any time, with no connection to the lunar cycle, other than one new werewolf who didn't have control of himself yet.
• Became werewolves if they were bitten by another werewolf, with no mention of rabies or the lycanthrope flower, or anything else in the mythology.
• Were apparently immortal, providing they didn't get killed by the "deathdealer" vampires.
• Had full control and human intelligence while in wolf form, with no hint of being mad with bloodlust or animalistic.
• Were all male (no reason was given for why no females, there just weren't any).
• Lived in dismal and uncomfortable sewers, despite apparently having full resources to purchase unlimited high tech weaponry and black leather wardrobes.
• Were said to be hunted to nearly the brink of extinction by the vampires, despite the fact that there were countless werewolves in the movie, and any werewolf could apparently make another werewolf at any time he wanted to, with just one bite.

My point is not that I totally object to the changes and modernizations and streamlinings the writers made to the historical mythologies of the creatures, it's that they took out all of the layers and complexities and richness, and didn't replace it with anything of much substance.  Given that there were endless unnecessary shots of people walking in and out of doorways, driving, waiting at gates, parking, etc, they could so easily have cropped 15 or 20 minutes of dead time and put in so much more information, action, mythology, character development, etc.

The real problems with the movie were the mediocre screenplay and very mediocre direction and editing.  There were some good scenes and lots of gothic atmosphere, and set decoration was frequently gorgeous, but they just did so much less with it than they could have.  I don't really agree with Ebert's review, but his comment on the director was informative and accurate.

"Underworld" is the directing debut of Len Wiseman, an art director ("Stargate," "Independence Day") who can stage great-looking situations but has few ideas about characters and plots.

A few random thoughts, both approving and scolding. Some of these are spoiler-y, in terms of giving away random cool things in the movie, though I don't talk about any plot points. 

¤ Never have movie characters expended so many bullets with so little accuracy.  Most of the big shoot outs seemed to star the 0% accuracy military squad who faced Neo and Trinity in the lobby of the building that Morpheus was held prisoner in, minus the acrobatic and super fast targets.  No one in the movie moved very quickly or made any real effort to avoid being shot; it was just that the ones with the guns sucked.  Characters would be within spitting distance of each other, each would unload hundreds of rounds, and one character would take a hit to the shoulder, if that.  The squib work was very sub-standard as well; sort of the opposite of the cool rubble-spitting bullets in the aforementioned Matrix shoot out.  Windows were broken, but there was no sign of walls being turned to rubble or even pockmarked by the machine gun battles taking place.

The characters also show very little gun battle savvy, even the ones who are supposedly very experienced in battle.  They stand still and shoot while making little effort to take cover, they only run or dodge after along second of realizing they are in trouble or out of ammo, and they constantly fire their guns dry without making any effort to get into cover with a few bullets left so they can reload in safety.  Apparently, crouching with a flowing cloak in the middle of a grungy tunnel directly under a mysteriously-convenient street light while you slowly fumble in a new clip is much better than having it ready to begin with, or carrying multiple weapons, or hiding in a shadow to jack in a new clip.

Plus, as I mentioned, everyone wears black, the werewolves are mostly in human form, and the vampires (for the most part) look in no way special or desiccated, so in several shootouts near the end you have no idea who is shooting at who. Not that you particularly care at that point.  You don't care who is shooting, and you don't care who wins the battle.

¤ There was a distinct lack of good hand to hand combat.  The vampires are basically pasty white wimps who have no hope whatsoever in a fight with a werewolf that's transformed.  The overall hand to hand vamp vs. wolf body count is like 50 to 1 in favor of the werewolves. In fact that's not much different than the overall body count, plus very few of the vampires actually go out and fight, which makes you wonder just exactly how the werewolves are losing the war.

There is one super strong ancient vampire who does a nice hand to hand crushing blow, and the main female vampire Selene shows some extra strength once or twice, but that's pretty much it.  There's a cool scene in the trailer where Selene punches out some guys hand to hand, but you see the whole thing in the trailer; it lasts about 3 seconds on film.  It's a nice scene, which makes you wish they'd done more of it, or involved some better weapons.  More on that below.

Also note how long this review has gone before I felt any need to mention any character by name.  Take that as a sign of how interesting and individual they are.

¤ There's a cool scene in the trailer where Selene shoots holes in a floor and then falls down to another level.  It's in the movie, and she does it since a horde of werewolves are charging at her and her congenitally poor aim prevents her from shooting them in a narrow hallway with essentially unlimited ammunition. Okay, whatever.

However, she falls exactly one floor, and then stands there and thinks about it a bit, before running off.  There is then a chase scene outside the building that goes on for a long time, long enough for a werewolf she wounds several minutes after the floor-shooting to chase her car down.  The whole time I'm wondering, "Where did the 5 other werewolves go?"  They would have been down the hole she blasted in 3 seconds, and after her relentlessly.  Instead they just vanish once they are no longer convenient plot devices for the "shoot a circular hole in the floor" scene. Sloppy writing.

¤ Random pursuits. Of course they do the whole, "monster on the roof of the car" scene, where the main character driving never thinks to slam on the brakes and send the monster flying until he/she is shot or nearly shot/stabbed.  (Scenes from Terminator 2 & 3, as well as Road Warrior 3 immediately leap to mind as parallels.) In this one the werewolf on the roof tumbles down once she brakes, and then conveniently stands there thinking it over until she slowly backs up, and then slowly accelerates and hits him.  After which he watches her drive away, rather than running her down again.

There is a later scene where a human is in the vampire estate and runs away, and despite him being very important to their cause they just watch him go.  Can't they like, run super fast?  Drive after him?  It's miles to town and he's on foot; how hard would it be to find him just driving along the road?

There are several other scenes where people escape and no one makes much effort to chase them down, or people are forgotten the minute they are out of sight, etc. 

¤ Improbable and ineffective weapons.  I've already mentioned that they fire innumerable rounds with very little effect, but it's all so dumb.  No one can hit shit, but if they do hit an enemy it's hardly every lethal, though it does slow them down.  Might I suggest a shot gun?  Hard to miss with, and while they're down and writing from the silver or magical light bullets you can just finish them off with some close range blasts.

There is a cool scene in the trailer where a vampire has two whips and fights a werewolf with them.  That works about as well as you'd expect.  The werewolf gets a few scratches, then walks in and devours the vampire.  Since 90% of the fights take place in narrow hallways, how exactly did the guy think those whips would come in handy against the tank-like werewolves who are hardly slowed by gunfire? Of course he got to use them in the one place that allowed him room to use them, but he predictably failed miserably with them anyway.

Selene has one scene where she uses throwing star thingies.  She is, of course, 100% accurate with them, compared to being about 2% accurate with her guns, but they are utterly pointless weapons.  Not even silver, apparently, and the werewolf she hits wears them like Christmas ornaments until he gets a chance to have them removed.

The lack of body armor was silly also.  The vampires are using silver bullets, which by necessity are not armor-piercing (the silver is too soft a metal).  The werewolves are using these gel-pack bullets that have some sort of liquid sunshine stuff, and those obviously aren't going to penetrate much without breaking.  Kevlar vests all around would have cut the body count by 95%. And it's not like they can't wear body armor of they'll be conspicuous in public; they are never in public, and in fact there isn't any public; they exist in this underworld where no inconvenient humans ever show up to create complications or interrupt their wild gun battles.

¤ As in most movies with immortal characters or evil organizations, there is no sign of how they finance themselves.  No one works, they spend a fortune on architecture and fashion, they have all the hardware and cars, etc.  Where does the money come from?  The vampires are mentioned to own several companies, but since none of them seem to have any tech savvy or real world experience, who handles the money?  Who provides the company direction?  Who builds all of the cool toys?

It's much the same for the werewolves, except they never mention any form of support.  We also never see anyone in the movie eat anything, go to the bathroom, never see any coffins for the vamps or even dry clumps of hay for the werewolves.  The fricking vampire mansion is like any other old country estate, including big glass windows everywhere, and bedrooms with them.  Um, hello, death by sunlight?  Black windows?  Interior sleeping rooms?  There was even a super customized vampire train with... you guessed it, tons of large, easily-broken glass windows.  Why in the hell do vampires who can't even see in the dark want windows in their train?

Obviously I don't want a full segment on "how they live" but the werewolves appear to inhabit a constantly wet sewer with no comforts at all, and the vampires live in a country mansion with no hint of the whole "we die in the sunlight" problem.  And that's not been removed from the mythos, one vampire dies from sunlight in one scene. Fortunately it's always dark and almost always raining in the movie, so none of this matters.

¤ One of the coolest concepts was the creepy, desiccated, hibernation sort of thing the elder vampires engage in.  They are on some sort of long term schedule to be awoken after centuries of sleep, and the actual process of this is pretty damn cool, though the security protecting the ancient vampires (not to mention the room drainage) is ridiculously lacking.

However this exists purely for a small plot device.  There is no reason given why they need to or want to hibernate; they just do in order to let the incompetent vampire guy be in charge when shit starts to hit the fan.  Since the other vampires apparently live for centuries or longer, and never do the hibernation thing, why do the elders?

Plus, we see two of the elders and one is indeed an old man, though still very powerful, but the other is a female who looks about 22.  How is she an elder, and why, since she goes out like a bitch when it comes time to fight?

¤ One of the big missing elements was passion.

One of the main allures of vampires has always been the eroticism.  They seduce females, it's not all just attack and bite, and the bite should be a very erotic, sensual thing.  As I said earlier, there is 1 bite in the whole movie, and it's sort of sexy, but more done out of necessity. There is never a scene of a vampire being seductive or sensual or worldly, and there is no sex of any kind at any point in the movie.  Nor even any nudity, other than topless men who have just or are about to turn into werewolves.

The werewolves have it even worse.  There are no female wolves, and there is never any scene of any kind showing werewolves after female women. Apparently they just fight the vampires.  There isn't even any hint of homoeroticism, which would have added some interest and at least made them seem to have some urges, other than wanting to kill vampires. There are several female vampires, but other than Selene they just flounce around the vampire estate and serve no purpose.

Plus, despite all of the sexy people and interesting costumes, there is never anything at all sexy about how they act or move or dress.  There are hot vampire women, and they put Selene in super tight latex for the whole movie, but there's never a close up of her or any good angles to see her, other than her face.  We don't need lingering and gratuitous crotch shots or something, but why put the females in tight or skimpy clothing and then never give the audience a good look at them?

The same goes for the men as well.  There are some topless shots of hunky guys, but they are always dirty or sweaty or covered in fake blood.  Perhaps some people get off on that, but where were the shots of really gorgeous vampires sliding into their beautiful suits?  Or hunky werewolves flexing as they healed?  Everyone was just dirty and grungy and covered in blood they never seemed to see any reason to wash off.

Even the human Michael, who was bitten early on, spent the rest of the movie with a huge, wet, oozing wound on one shoulder.  What made it doubly ridiculous was that he was a damn medical intern at a hospital with apparently one other employee and no patients. He can't put on a bandage or go to a doctor? Plus there's another scene were he saves Selene from drowning and puts a bandage on her, and then... falls asleep next to her underneath a pier.  Um, what happened to calling an ambulance, or perhaps the police to mention the monsters that just tried to kill you and destroyed most of your apartment building in the process?

And I don't just mean passion = sex.  I mean passion for anything.  We're supposed to believe that Selene is willing to risk everything for the man she just met, but there's no sign that she's in love or lust.  They have like one kiss, and he just looks at her, never touches her or seems attracted to her.  It's basically the whole Romeo/Juliet forbidden love between warring factions thing (with a twist), but if there was any evidence of love, I missed it.

And there doesn't seem to be any reason for either side to be.  They are supposed to be at war, but mostly they just do it like soldiers; going out to fight professionally.  There is never any weight given to the value of life; not even one's own life.  Think about it, if you could live forever, how eager would you be to go run into heavy enemy fire for basically nothing?  But they do, repeatedly, and for no real reason.  No one is ever afraid or especially happy or satisfied. They just do what they were going to do, and that's that.

Better writing would have improved this aspect greatly, and made us care at all more about the characters. 

¤ And lastly, we don't care. I had no idea who I was rooting for near the end.  Despite the main character, Selene, being a vampire, and hearing how she's been lied to, and seeing how she's in love (I guess) with the hunky Michael that everyone has been chasing... I could have cared less if she won or lost.  The werewolves are just hungry brutes with no redeeming characteristics, the vampires are stupid and decadent and scheming, so we're left with Selene and Michael, the star-crossed lovers characters, and I guess we're supposed to root for them to end up together and alive.

But how about the larger story?  Eh, whatever...

And it wasn't a case of the bad guys being shown to have a heart and us growing to like them and feeling torn in our loyalties; it was a case of not giving a shit which side won, since you didn't have anyone you liked enough to root for.

The fact that the movie ends with everything but a "to be continued..." sign doesn't help.  I don't know if they'll do a sequel; it wasn't a very good movie and I don't think it will make all that much money.  Perhaps if they can do it relatively cheaply, they'll go ahead with a #2 and hope the franchise will take off in Underworld II (U2?) if they get a better story and director.

It's damn hard for a half-decent action movie to not do well financially these days; special effects cost so much less than they used to with computer technology, you can make the movies without needing big stars to eat up $10 or $15m of the price tag, they tend to gross pretty well overseas as well as domestically, and then you are just about guaranteed $20 or $30m from the overpriced DVD sales.  So I guess with that said, a sequel is likely, so long as Underworld doesn't totally bomb. 

The main thing I took away from the movie was a desire to write my own novel/screenplay with vampires or werewolves or both.  Underworld had an interesting concept (though apparently it's mostly ripped off from some White Wolf RPG) with the war, and some of the plot points of Selene's back history were clever, but other than that it was pretty much a mess. Or at least could have been better 95% of the time.

Seeing how mediocre this one was, especially in the writing, just made me realize that the vampire and werewolf archetypes are far from played out when translated into the modern world, and while I don't have any burgeoning concepts for work starring either of the creature types, I am going to let my mind wander in that directly.  Previously I would have just told myself, "There's no point in even thinking about that sort of thing, since it's all been done to death."  But seeing that something relatively mediocre like Underworld's plot was enough to get this sort of financing and production going for it gives me great inspiration.

To be continued...?

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