ross already saw this but can’t get the tune out of my head. thinking about getting into new edition. no need to watch past 1:00 where the annoying voice comes in.

Mini-Blog: I don’t know if it’s something I bring with my personality, or a natural tendency of guitar players, but whenever I get into a song in a style that’s sort of new to me I immediately want to somehow “get involved” in that scene. This happened recently for me with this song from Silent Hill 3.

Also, I noticed that City of the Living Dead is now streaming on netflix.

Anyway, I was hoping to get your opinions about something. Do you think it’d be lame to travel to Japan as part of a tour group? I’m kind of in a transition period right now and I think I might want to go over the next few months. I’m not sure what level of language proficiency I could obtain in the time frame and I think that just in general going around alone would be kind of stupid. Any advice from the more well traveled?

Bloody Reunion: Honestly, I’m only reviewing this movie in the hope that I can convince one of you to watch it so that I can then ask your opinion of it. If only we had stayed one more night at the river!

Brief summary: a group of young adults visit their old grammar school teacher, Ms. Park, in the South Korean countryside. Things are understandably tense as it is shown how Ms. Park, bitter over the collapse of her family, routinely inflicted varying types of cruelty on her students. For some reason, though, she acts more or less oblivious to it all, even when confronted about it.

I kind of wished they had kept the name “To Sir, with Love” which I suspect is the literal translation of the Korean title. I love the blatant irony of it as well as the obvious gender mismatch. But really, the most curious thing about this movie is the twist. I’d say I’ve watched a fair amount of K-Horror, and almost every K-Horror has a twist, but I’ve never seen a twist that was this incoherent. It’s reason enough to watch.

Definitely didn’t meet anyone like her in my troop, TT

hey guys, sorry i haven’t really been pulling my weight with posting recently
miniblog: had a lot of fun crushing the mooshlock with a random deck and today i had oh!s for breakfast.

i also watched a documentary on the chiptune scene called “reformat the planet” that i found pretty interesting. it’s like watching this you can almost suss out who the heroes and villains would be if it were a heroic drama.

i think my favorite group of the bunch though is the depreciation guild, who come in kind of a ways through the documentary and have a very 4ad feel. coova is a shoe-in for mark’s fav, and could mark denardo be ripping off dan any harder? there’s one awesome shot of him (pt.3, ~6:50) when a chiptune festival is about to start and nobody’s even started playing yet and he’s just going out of his mind with joy and anticipation.

Mini-blog: I watched Phantasm 3 and Phantasm 4 recently. I’m still thinking them over.

Anyway, after Ross mentioned Running Wild I was all over it. At first I was a little skeptical but then found some really great songs. Then Darren an email talking about some Hobbit metal.

Has a song ever won you over in the first 6 seconds? (If it doesn’t your heart is officially stone.) You’ll know what I’m talking about. And seriously, “caught in the fine line between madness and pride.” Have I ever been there.

First up is notorious Japanese band Bump of Chicken. Yes it’s a weird name. I believe it’s supposed to suggest goosebumps.

Next up is Stormwarrior. I would describe them as being similar to 3 Inches of Blood with more shred.

I’ve been either too busy or not inspired enough to post anything of substance over the last couple of weeks, but my media consumption has continued unabated.  So here’s a summary of some of what I’ve been experiencing:

Fang Island (Self-titled album).  I downloaded this off of itunes after Zach and I saw this Brooklyn-based happy metal machine open for Red Sparowes in Sacramento a couple of months back.  There’s something both heartwarming and ludicrous about this quintet, which aptly describes their music as “the sound of everybody high-fiving each other.” While Fang Island on record is good, they are even more of a beer-swilling, head-banging, vocal-harmonizing guitar-soloing juggernaut live.  Like Styx for hipsters…in a good way.  Fang Island provided a welcome palate cleanser at the Red Sparowes show by essentially bursting the bubble of avant metal humorlessness.  Also, the whole band is originally from Rhode Island and one of the guys in the band used to work at this great video rental place in Providence.

Battlestar Gallactica (the first three or so seasons of the series).  Holy Lords of Kobol is Battlestar Gallactica good!  Sci-fi of the highbrow/refracted mirror kind, and amazingly great considering the poor quality of its source material.  Plus, Edward James Olmos literally captains the ship as Commander Bill Adama, who is about as stoic as they come, but isn’t above punching his son in the gut while sparring in the gym.  BSG has all of The Next Generation’s high seriousness without its sometimes cloying moral clarity, and tackles a series of topical issues including torture, electoral politics, civilian command of the military, and journalistic ethics.  And the character development is great.

Inception. Roaring Shark West Coast saw Chris Nolan’s latest exercise in self-serious conceptual weirdness a couple of nights ago.  I had heard some devastatingly bad reviews of this movie, so I went in with low expectations, and was consequently pleased.  The plot is ridiculous but nonetheless entertaining, though it annoyingly manages to recycle a whole lot of Freud, whose theories on identity projection, the subconsciousness, totems, etc. are ransacked for the purpose of making art (or artiness).  The sets are predictably elegant and the cinematography clean, though my favorite part of the movie involves what can only be described as Nolan getting his way with a big budget and inserting a protracted ski and snowmobile-based battle in an alpine forest.  This is probably the closest I’ve ever seen Nolan get to goofy humor.  Nolan brings out his repertory company for this one – Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy and, oh yeah, Michael Caine show up for the dreamy madness.