apple juice

Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (album of the year)
Beck – Sea Change
Spoon – Kill the Moonlight
Coldplay – A Rush of Blood to the Head
Mr. Lif – I Phantom
Jurassic 5 – Power In Numbers
Blackalicious – Blazing Arrow
Sleater-Kinney – One Beat
Norah Jones – Come Away With Me
Sigur RÛs – ( )

Wired, in my opinion, has gone downhill since I first started reading the magazine. However, they still write some cool articles from time to time. This article, discussing some of the battle scenes for The Two Towers is amazing.

When an animator places agents into a simulation, they’re released to do what they will. It’s not crowd control but anarchy. That’s because each agent makes decisions from its point of view. Still, when properly genetically engineered, the right character will always win the fight. “It’s possible to rig fights, but it hasn’t been done,” Regelous said. “In the first test fight we had 1,000 silver guys and 1,000 golden guys. We set off the simulation, and in the distance you could see several guys running for the hills.”

It’s scary to take two leaps ahead and think about the possibilities of some sort of “intelligent” program wired up to a robot. that has more advanced motor movements than the newest Asimo robot.

A sad day for Stereolab fans everywhere.

They are one of my favorite bands. My buddy Doug introduced them to me in High School, and they have powered many a drive to the mountains during college. I never knew much about them, I didn’t know any of the bandmembers’ names (until today), but I always enjoyed their music.

In High Fidelity, one of my favorite lines of the movie, for whatever reason, is when the journalist from the Daily Reader is in the store, and she looks up, out of nowhere, and asks, “Is this Stereolab?”

Favorite Stereolab Song: Le Boob Oscillator

The Dumbest Movie Ever.

Okay, that’s a little harsh. Goldmember wasn’t a terrible movie, but I do think it was the worst of the three. I admit I laughed pretty hard when Dr. Evil got hit with the “meteor”. Other parts were very funny as well. However, when a movie becomes aware that it is a movie, (Austin reading the subtitles on the screen) you know there is a problem.

I hope that it is the last of the series. The first one was excellent, and they’ve been downhill from there.

My 4 word movie review:

Wait for the DVD.

This movie was missing much of the ‘magic’ (sorry) that the first one brought to the screen. About 30 minutes till the end you will be looking at your watching, hoping it’s over soon. The running time between the two is like a 10 minute difference. This one seems to be 30 minutes too long.

Biggest annoyance: At times, pretending like the first movie (book) didn’t exist. They were inconsistent on this, but connect the dots! We know that Hogwarts is the “Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry”. We know who Professor Dumbledore is. At least we didn’t get a full explanation of what Quidditch was like in the book.

The way I’d like sequels to work will be displayed in The Two Towers. Didn’t like how The Fellowship of the Ring just ended? That’s because it’s a trilogy! The next one picks right up. I can’t wait for the 10 hours of Lord of the Rings madness that will be the DVD set. (whenever that is released)

A site that I frequently go to when I want to read about a new movie, cd or videogame is Metacritic.

The wonderful thing about this site is they take a CD for example, Spoon’s Kill The Moonlight (a 2002 top 10 candidate) and they have a database of newspapers and online sources from which they gather the scores and excerpts from all the different reviews of this album. They then assign a meta-score, and provide links back to each individual review.

It does wonders for my research process when I’m going to buy a new disc (be it DVD, CD or GameCube game).

Note to the RIAA. I do actually do research before buying CDs, I don’t listen to the radio to find new music, and I’m not going to buy what you tell me to buy. I rarely buy a CD on impulse. I’m always going to try to have heard most of the album before purchasing it. I know you think filesharing is the problem, it’s not. The problem you have now, is that all of us (your customers) are becoming better informed. We don’t want to buy the crap you’re trying to feed us.

Filled with songs that slowly seep into your everyday life, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco is possibly one of my favorite albums of all time. The intertwining melodies of each track on this album flow perfectly from beginning to end. Give this one the headphone test, it passes.