Thursday, June 7

Feeling Prolific: Random reviews!

28 Weeks Later
This is a bloody sequel to a great film. If you want fast, angry zombies then this fits the bill. They run, they kill and they seem much more sadistic than what I remember from the first one. This film carries some interesting themes but in the end is just a quick run through London while avoiding different obstacles. Problems encountered include snipers, zombies, people who don’t want to run into the open to distract said snipers, gas, the dark, the uncertainty of your fathers moral character, badly locked back doors, helicopters and napalm. It’s good straight up horror with a couple of annoying plot points.

Radiohead - Videotape
This is a new song that has been played in their more recent tours. The version I heard was played in Boston in June of 2006. I love it; beginning gently it slowly builds up a piano playing behind some haunting noise. It slowly gets louder and more intense but never passes into weird craziness. It just builds up to a nice soothing and beautiful peak with Thom York’s usual wailing standing out. I really hope makes it onto the new album. I’m not sure what the lyrics are about, something about going to heaven and showing, bringing or getting showed a videotape. Possible recording one? Also not being afraid about ‘whatever happens because I know today has been the most perfect day I have ever seen”.

Dr Eduardo de la Fuente, Sociology of Media Lecturer
An interesting character. He has a nice conversational style and talks around the lecture notes quite well. This is what I see makes a good lecturer- one that adds information around the slides they put up rather than just reading them out. However much of his material is based on the weeks readings, if doing the readings before the lecture be prepared to cover the same ground several times. He’s quite relaxed and casual but does seem to think that he is funnier than he actually may be. I say he’s pretty cool all up. He also has an awesome name.

Pirates of the Caribbean 3
Overall this is an enjoyable film centred on several action set pieces. It’s good but no better than the second one. It manages to tie up the plot lines left over from the first two but on the other hand also leave the series incredibly open to sequels. I find this series interesting because the main characters don’t seem to trust each other at all and frequently backstab everyone. I think every character was betrayed at least once physically or emotionally throughout the film. Can’t they all just get along? It’s kind of frustrating but at least tries a different take on large scale action movies. Orlando gives his usual performance- a masterful reproduction of looking worried or confused. Sometimes he’s even both! Now, if you go to see it and don’t really get much out of it, I suggest not sticking around for the bonus scene after the credits. It doesn’t really add much that you couldn't guess and you’d get just as much out of it by having someone else tell you about it.

Last.FM
This would come under the swanky ‘Web 2.0’ umbrella, from what I gather Web 2.0 tech is all about user generated content. This site can keep track of everything you listen to. It then you lets you look at what other people are listening to, showing you the people which have similar tastes to you so that you can check out what else they’re interested in. It also generates it’s own list of music that is similar to yours and lets you listen to it streamed. So far it seems pretty cool, after only using it for a week or two it’s been suggesting music that I already like but haven’t played with this site keeping track of it- hopefully once it gets a broader sense of what I enjoy it should be able to point me to new and exiting things. I also just love stats and lists so checking out just what I’ve been listening to and how much- or what other people have, is a lot of fun for me. It’s even easy to use; you just install a small program that sends back your info to the site. After that there is no other effort involved.

Check it out at http://www.last.fm

Check me out at http://www.last.fm/user/morningbright/

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