This and That

A little behind on the movies lately. Knocked Up and Ocean's Thirteen are still in the pipeline....meaning I haven't seen them yet basically. I do plan to, though, I've just been pretty busy with work and such. And during the time I'm home, I usually just want to relax. The new job is a lot to take in. Some of the stuff I do is the same basic stuff I've always covered...charity events, library programs, etc. But keeping track of endless Town Council/Planning & Zoning/Conservation Commission meetings is proving to be a new challenge. Especially when they don't get out until 11:30 pm on some nights. People have a lot to say about proposed condominium developments when you ask them, as it turns out.

There's some comfort in knowing that on days after meetings like that, I tend to only spend about four hours in the office...and that's not my idea either. I'm often told to go home by the editor...because if I didn't I might rack up overtime hours. It's incredible the lengths the company will go to to make sure I don't go over my forty hours. It's like they would rather die than have to pay the extra $15 or whatever it would be if I went a little over. But hey, whatever. I'm not exactly looking for less free time at this point.

Plenty of side projects grab my attention while I'm home as well. The biggest is, of course, Master of the Wind. Closing in on Arc IV now....and I'll have more to say when it's complete. However, I did see today that Mark uploaded the trailer we made to Arc III on YouTube. When I decided to post it here, it suddenly occurred to me that with the song selected...this would technically qualify as a Power Metal Music Video. Two birds with one stone, I guess. Enjoy this homemade PMMV.

If I Found the Hidden Fountain

Continuing with Sonata, and this is a surprisingly good pairing. I've got some clips from the animated film Balto to go along with this song. I remember the commercials used to say it was "Based on a true story," which I guess it was, since there was a dog named Balto who led a team of sled-dogs through Alaskan wilderness to transport some diptheria vaccine....but I doubt he talked much or fought a bear. Oh well. I'll have a more substantial entry very soon.

Sonata Arctica - Graven Image

C'est Moi

You've got to see this:
Sonata Arctica - The End of This Chapter

Unfortunately this YouTube user has disabled the option that lets me embed the video right into a blog post...but this one is worth the extra click.

Normally I find music videos which play a song set to a bunch of scenes from an anime/movie that the person likes, but this one is way different. Using footage from The Sims, "Bandallach" creates a music-video designed for this song. I can't believe the detail in the faces and movements that you can get with that game. Here's the song's lyrics in case Tony Kakko's Finnish accent proves to be too thick.

Everything Old is New Again....and Lame.

So I read my Entertainment Weekly today and there was a little news brief about a couple of upcoming sequel ideas. I thought I needed to share how terrible they all are.

Terminator 4 - With no Gov. Schwarzenegger. Yeah.....no.

The Incredible Hulk - Sequel to The Hulk, except replacing Eric Bana and Jennifer Connelly with Edward Norton and Liv Tyler. Norton's one of my favorite actors, but something really stinks about this project. Ang Lee's not directing again, in his place is Louis Leterrier, known for edgy action movies like The Transporter. Seems like they're going for a much more straightforward Hulk movie this time around....but something about that really bugs me. Ang Lee's Hulk had a number of problems, to be sure: it was heavy-handed, that comic frame gimmick was irritating, and it bit off way more than it could chew...but it was different. It stands out still, for reasons good and bad, in an increasing sea of superhero movies. Now Marvel's coming along and saying "Sorry Ang made the last one so cerebral! We should know better than to challenge your expectations! We'll give you your derivative Hulk film now!" It's all very repellent.

And I've saved the "best" one for last:
The Mummy 3: Curse of the Dragon - A second sequel to a movie I thought was all-around shitty, but get this. It's not in Eygpt, it's in the Far East. Jet Li is going to play an Asian-style mummy. I swear I'm not making this up. If you're going to change the thing around that much, why don't you just start a new series...or better yet, just try to make a good action movie that can stand on it's own! Oh wait, we don't do that anymore. Even Bruce Almighty has to have a sequel nowadays.

If this is any indication, the next couple of summers are going to blow.

To end this on a better note, I've brought in our second Power Metal Music Video. This is an amusing compilation of clips from The Two Towers collected by a YouTube member with the handle "Crackerasscracka." Enjoy.

Rhapsody - Flames of Revenge

Fun with YouTube

All that fanfare and not much to show yet. I wish I could have been more active on this over the past week or so, but real life is kind of knocking me around a bit while I prepare for my new job. Reviews will start coming in soon...I'm hoping to see 28 Weeks Later sometime in the next few days and of course Shrek 3 is this weekend. For right now though, I'm going to debut a new feature which I want to become a regular occurrence at the lab. That's right...it's Power Metal Music Video time!

The first song is in honor of the totally bitchin' concert I saw with Mark and Alex in New York City last weekend. And given how often I make jokes about Naruto YouTube videos (seriously, there is one set to every song in existence), I figured the first one couldn't be from anything else.

Within Temptation - Mother Earth