FINALLY!

It's about fucking time!
So many people said it wasn't going to happen, but it did, BAM!
Two classes have been unveiled so far, the Barbarian returns to smash shit with his hammers and axes and the Witch Doctor steps onto the Diablo scene for the first time with the abilities to raise plague infested canine like creatures from corpses, which leads me to believe the Necromancer won't be making a return. You can also choose between alternate sexes now, which also leads me to lead the Amazon won't be making a return either. A guy Amazon... I doubt it. I can't even wait!

They're Coming To Get You Barbra... The Trees That Is

on monday i went to check out m. night shyamalan's new film 'the happening'. the world has been committing mass suicide at random and it turns out we have good old mother nature to thank. i was really excited from the trailers, all those people offing them selfs in such brutal ways, but what you see in the trailer is what you get. i was a little disappointed in the lack of gore and brutality, it seemed like such a promising canvas. the bits that we do see are definitely well executed and even have me feeling a little squeamish. i can appreciate the fact that there wasn't so much because it really gave what there was a big punch, and believe me, it was quite effective indeed. 'the happening' was marketed as Night's first rated R movie but i was surprised to see a 14a rating on it when i picked up the tickets. i guess the R rating was for the US theatrical release. the violence isn't anything more or less then what you would see in any other movie that wasn't rated R but i guess the fact that it was all suicide made the rating board a little uncomfortable which branded it R in the states. also, the movie was marketed as a horror film, which it was not at all; it was a science fiction flick through and through. as with any science fiction film, you can really tell when the movie was made. you can definitely tell that this movie was made in our environmentally conscious times... well, veiled attempt at being environmentally conscious. humanity has become to much of a bane on the earth so the plants have come up with a plan; release a toxin that causes humans to commit suicide. the only big problem i had with this movie was the character development, it was really unnecessary and a lot of it didn't make any sense at all. the major character development flaw was mrs. jones. she has such an odd character and your just waiting to see what she's all about and then BAM! her face is through a pain of glass and nothing is said of her after that... pointless. i found this film was much like george romeros night of the living dead, not because there were zombies or anything like that, but the end of the world idea was executed so similar. in both movies, the world is ending, disaster is upon us and there is such a tense air, but the bulk of the material is shot in a field, or a farm house; it was executed so well we don't need to see the mayhem all over the world, because we believe it. considering hes only been around for about 10 years, i think were gonna see many many more movies from him, and if he can deliver movies with such classic elements i can only imagine how good his future films are going to be. night has been getting a load of slack for his films ever since 1999 when he's giant block buster 'the sixth sense' came out; all the critics and film goers have been comparing all his films to this massive success and they have all been disappointed. personally, i love all his films, its just to bad his massive hit had to be at the beginning of his directorial career. love him or hate him, the film 'the happening' reminds us we need to be more conscious of our world and treat it properly before mother nature goes all kung fu on our asses. cheers!

NxNE

every year it's the same thing; nxne (north by north east) comes to town, i never get the time off, then it happens and i glue myself to a radio for the three to four days of it and pout and wish i was there. this year was no different of course =). the line up was quite exciting and there were many bands that i wish i could have seen and made more of an opinion of. on the top of my list was spiral beach, a cute little catchy band. of course moneen was there as well and played at the el macombo. i've always preferred their earlier material but listening to their coverage from nxne i heard some of the new new new stuff that they were show casing at their nxne show and i'm super excited to check out the album when it comes out, which won't be for a while yet. also, local barrie/alcona heroes, fox jaws had a set and from what i've heard from friends and blogs and what not, it went very well. hopefully this gets them more public exposure. im pouty, and i wish i went. here is the video for 'made of stone' by spiral beach. cheers!

One-Winged Angel

probably my all time favorite piece of music to appear in a video game would have to be one-winged angel from final fantasy VII. for anyone familiar with the game, it happens during the fight in which you face off against the big bad sephiroth. i found this clip on youtube of nobuo uematsu's (the composer of the final fantasy VII soundtrack) band, the black mages, performing it with a full orchestra and latin chorus backing them up. this song has been done time and time again at video game awards and the various video game orchestra events but this is probably the best i've seen. this version however, sounds like the advent version, which appears on the soundtrack to final fantasy VII: Advent children, the animated movie sequel to the video game. this is due to the electric guitars and rock drum kit, which might i add, makes the song even better. enjoy! cheers!

Linuxeriffic

last week i had finally had enough with windows vista and i wiped my c drive partition with all that was vista and the broken remnants of xp. i then booted up ubuntu and am so happy that i did. i have always been an apple man, but for my school laptop i really couldn't afford all that money just for a box to word process, surf the next and maybe play a few games. windows osx is a unix based operating system, and ubuntu is a linux os, which is based in unix, so having something that echoed mac osx on my laptop designed for windows is amazing. i guess i picked ubuntu because it probably the most recognized of the linux distributions, its very well put together and its completely and totally free. i think there are only a few that have a fee attached to them, like red hat and i think debian as well. the cost covers all the user support and the quality of the os but ubuntu has the same, if not better, support and the quality is superb, i haven't come across anything i don't think is excellent yet. needless to say from now on, any none apple box is getting some form of linux on it. another really amazing thing about the ubuntu community is that there are so many version of the os; ubuntu, kubuntu, secunbuntu, gobuntu, edunbuntu and so on and so forth. they even have religious unbuntus such as ubuntu CE(christian edition) and ME (muslim) edition. also, on the opposite end of the spectrum there is ubuntu SE (satanic edition), no jokes. the latest version of unbuntu is called hardy heron, which is 8.4. the latest version of SE is called headless hoarsman 8.4. Honestly, i think its quite hilarious. when version 6.4 was out about a year ago it was know as version 666.4 on the SE, how cute =) The distribution that interests me the most though is ubuntustudio. this os comes with a full suit of open source audio, video and graphic editing and manipulating software. from reading some forums, the audio editing suit is comparable to pro tools... i don't know if i necessarily believe that, but if its even close, that is completely amazing, considering its all one hundred percent free. so i'm a linux man now, if anyone isn't really familiar with linux i suggest downloading the ubuntu ISO and making a boot disk. you can use the OS right from the cd, so you don't have to load anything, and if you don't like it, just take the cd out and sacrifice it in a fire to ubuntu satan! cheers!

this is the cute lil logo for ubuntu satanic edition =P