Movie update and the metal show

I watched Russian Ark last night, which from a technical perspective, is absolutely brilliant. It's a continuous 90 minute shot walking through the Hermitage, the Winter Palace in St Petersburg exploring the history and culture contained in there. The story, such as it is, appears to be defending the position and importance of Russian history from accusations that it's simply a cheap local rip-off of Italian and French culture. In this I think it succeeds. But over-all I got a bit tired with the lack of anything. If you approach it from a respect the tech / organisational perspective it's perfect, but as a movie, it didn't engage me as much as I hoped. I will however be going to the Hermitage at some point.

I started last night, and finished this morning, Meet the Applegates, where a species of large, very large, insects having been forced from their South American home by loggers, take human form and move to suburban USA. The intention to blow-up the local nuclear power plant and thus restore the world to the insects is the central theme. Where the humour comes from are their interactions in the human world, as a satirical look at the stupidity of various actions (credit cards, drug usage, bug eradication etc.) and how so many people want to be 'normal'. It is funny, and Ed Begley Jnr is in it. Good B-grade material, beer not necessarily needed.

The Metal Show
I'm a little worried, I seem to be coming around to liking the Dillinger Escape Plan and Mastodon (most recent stuff in both cases). Mastodon's new album is being thrown around as the saviour of metal, and prog-metal in particular. Pretty much a guaranteed turn-off, but damnit, the singles I've heard are good.
There's been some crap on (which I've skipped), some reasonable (Dark Angel), a modern take on 80s hair metal (headhunter), speed-metal (Iced Earth, which I seem to be liking too), the badness of opera-prog-metal (Rage: lord of the flies, which is better than expected, but still OTT, the lyrics are superbly dire), more speed (Ascendent Song, Keep of Kalessin - quite good), the superb Dimmu Borgir - The Serpentine Offering (great video too).
I've decided a couple of vids are needed, so you get Rage, and Dimmu Borgir, kinda two extremes of the metal genre.





Byebye for now. B