rusty_halo

Tonight I'm going to see VNV Nation. I don't like them that much, but my friend April is supposed to be there.

Depeche Mode is touring the U.S. this fall. I haven't seen tour dates yet, though.

NIN is also touring the U.S. this fall, with Queens of the Stone Age. They're playing Madison Square Garden on November 3. I am SO there. They'll also be in Philadelphia on November 5, which is a Saturday, so I might go to that, too. No clue yet when tickets are going on sale, though.

There a really interesting guide to electronic music here. The tutorial (history lesson) is neat, and the maps (of genres over time and place) are fascinating. Click "trance" to find the good stuff (goth, industrial, synthpop, darkwave, industrial rock, etc.) They've got Cruxshadows, KMFDM, NIN, blah blah blah, pretty much every band I like is represented somewhere. (I'd love to read an in-depth history of the evolution of these genres....)

Bruce Campbell will be at the Angelika Film Center tomorrow, signing at 10pm and showing his movie at 11:30. If I'm lucky, I might be able to go to that.

This week has sucked--work's been insanely stressful, and I've had to rush home to show my apartment every night. I'm going to try to make up for it this weekend.

I've been listening to NIN, With Teeth and The Fragile. Yes, I finally opened the shrink-wrapped copy of The Fragile that's been sitting on my CD shelf for the past five years. And hey, it's like, really good! Bunches of people have told me this over the years, but I always lacked the desire to listen to it. I'm enjoying it immensely now, though; I guess I had to wait to be in the right emotional place or something.

If you haven't seen it yet, check out chase820's latest: Night Fever (part 1 of 2). It's Queer as Folk fic, Brian/Michael, dark and angsty and delicious. It ties in with her wonderful QaF/AtS crossover The Man Who Wasn't There, but you don't need to read that to get this. I highly recommend it; no one writes Brian/Michael like Chase.

I saw "Kingdom of Heaven" last week with jaydk. I actually kind of liked it. Orlando was better than I expected, perfectly adequate, if not quite as charismatic as he could have been. Still, it was a quiet role and an introspective character, and he pulled that off.

The film itself wasn't great, too predictable and not very subtle, but I really enjoyed the fact that Ridley Scott somehow found a way to make a movie about the Crusades that ultimately endorsed pacifism and atheism. Modern sensibilities, sure, but every film is a product of its own cultural age. I thought it was nicely subversive for a mainstream film in this cultural era.

And I liked that it at least tried to grapple with big moral questions, and wasn't just about romance and action--that the romance and action actually were there to serve the plot, and not the other way around. jaydk really seriously needs to post, though, because she actually managed to attend the premiere--she walked down the red carpet and stood near Orlando and Liam Neeson and everything. (Pssst! jaydk! Post!)

I'm still dying with anticipation for the new Star Wars movie. (This is so sad, after I swore I wouldn't look forward to it. ) I was the 10-year-old girl who once actually managed to work herself into sobs over Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi, so I know this movie is going to affect me. It has to at least get to whatever bit of that 10-year-old is still left, right? And The Empire Strikes Back is, to this day, my all time favorite movie. And this new one is supposed to be just as dark! (!!!) I know the dialogue and digital effects will suck, but still, maybe the other aspects will redeem it.

Anyway, a couple of good articles I stumbled across while reading everything I could find on the topic:

Obi-Wan Kenobi: Jedi sex symbol
Darth Vader lives!

(I just liked these, and thought they were worth sharing.)

Yesterday I went to an opera, Alessandro Leardini's 1649 Psiche (Psyche), in Brooklyn. (Yes, I know there are three things in that sentence that don't go together very well, namely me, opera, and Brooklyn, but it happened.) It was pretty, though I know nothing about opera; I went because my coworker was singing in it. It was kind of fun to compare the English and Italian translations; I was surprised how much Italian I could figure out based on the bit of Spanish that I know.

I dragged jaydk with me, and we decided to surprise queenofthorns, since we were in her neighborhood, so we ended up sneaking up behind her and scaring the hell out of her as she was walking her dog. She forgave us, though, and it was cool to have a sort of impromptu meetup like that. :)

Musically, I'm listening to a lot of early Pig, and loving it. Note to self: another long post analyzing Raymond Watts' early work. And maybe another on his recurring lyrical themes. And maybe a third on the various stages of his work, their connections, differences, and changes over time. Must find time for this.

( meme; drujan is going to be jealous! )