Back in 1996, with newly released Load steamrolling the charts worldwide, Metallica appeared as one of the guest performers at the MTV Europe Music Awards.
The band was supposed to play King Nothing, their newly-minted single. A radio-friendly track off the mellower-than-expected album.
But that’s not what happened on stage.
The band played through two of their rawest cover songs, both plagued with imagery and words not really suited for the occasion. While their take on Misfits’ Last Caress might have serviced as an interesting introduction for the supposed track, the band cemented their reputation with the choice of the second song. So What!, originally by Anti-Nowhere League, has very few verses that do not contain any of the seven words you supposedly can’t say on tv.
As such, Metallica’s performance was summarily censored from any re-runs of the show. Causing no end of scratched heads when I tried to explain to friends that the band did indeed play a good show, and that their songs of choice were vastly different than advertised in advance.
The attached video is a low quality take on the show, but the four minutes are worth it. But the really priceless moment of the occasion would’ve been a tape from the control room.
The trailer for the forthcoming Iron Sky movie is out.
Nazis. Grainy film. Melancholy music. Flying saucers. Swastika on the Moon. Big buildings, also on the moon. Very decent CGI. What’s there not to like?
Nothing. Apart from the entire lack of any acting (prancing around in a space suit does not qualify) . The 2010 release for the first finnish big budget publicity science fiction movie is quite anticipated.
Interactive fiction - that is: games that use pure text for input and output - seems not to be the topic of a snazzy movie.
But against all odds, GET LAMP, a documentary film on the very subject looks to be very interesting indeed. Jason Scott, the director, has previously put together a well-received documentary film on the bulletin board systems communities.
The recently released trailer for GET LAMP is not exactly action-packed, but a neat dissection of the first ever internet community I actually participated, back in the early nineties, when USENET was king of the hill.
A very relaxing easter weekend is drawing to a close, and what would be a better way to finish it off than bunnies.
A doubleheader of them, to be exact.
Useless Creations’ screensaver puts a group of rabbits on screen, and manages not to get annoying in the first fifteen seconds. In screensaver-land, that’s a plenty.
The second item is a triplet of songs from the second best episode of Buffy ever, Once More, With Feeling. There’s just no beating the Hush, but as a source for peppy songs, this award-winning sixth season episode comes up tops.
The fourth season of Lost kicked off on finnish television last week.
And continues directly where the third season ended, with a rift-inducing arrival of “rescuers” and flashforwards. The identity of the former is very much under wraps, but seems not to be of good news to all inhabitants. As to the second point, the main storyline still seems to occur on the island, I’m using that as the zero-point in the timeline.
For new arrivals on the scene, the production company has put together a nicely compressed view on the first three seasons. Its duration, at a mere 8:15, should not deter any viewers.
Via Domus, the Lost video game is out in Finland also (seemed to enjoy a rather delayed release), but following mainly lukewarm reviews I’m in no hurry to pick this up. With the sizable backlog that doesn’t diminish by itself, this wouldn’t get much playtime right now.
Somehow this does not feel nearly as great as their 2004 championship did - when they rose from a 0-3 position to an unexpected victory over their greatest rivals, the New York Yankees.
So, sadly, it’s unlikely that this year’s championship will be celebrated with a new Dropkick Murphys tune. So here’s a sweet repeat of Tessie.
White dove: check.
Guns akimbo: check.
Insurmountable odds: check.
Slow-mo: check (but with clippy myspace video this may be unintentional).
Mexican standoff: check
And the game seems interesting as well. But the influx of shooting games may be its undoing this fall - competition is stiff from the likes of Halo3 and Bioshock. But for a spiritual sequel to Hard-Boiled, Woo’s last Hong Kong film thus far, there ought to be a cordite-drenched niche somewhere on the shelves.
Cute Animals, part x: two sea otters holding hands. Video taken in Vancouver Aquarium - visited it back in 2003, and found these playful critters pleasant to watch.
Tears for Fears’ eighties angst-piece Mad World gets another high-profile resurrection.
Its first reincarnation was as the keystone song in one of the very finest movies of the third millennium, Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko. Eventually the Gary Jules’ melancholy version got Really Popular in the UK, reaching the #1 spot on the charts for christmas 2003.
Recently the song popped up again, this time in a advertisement for Gears of War, a futuristic orgy of violence on the XBox360 (attached below as the very first video clip in this blog). I’d have expected some atonal industrial grind in the commercials, but the juxtaposing of the wasteland scenery and the haunting song is effective, very effective.
The fourth season of 
