I recently (two hours ago) saw the current teen fad movie Twilight after finally building up the curiosity to see what the hell all the female members of my school were swooning over. In the words of my brother, "I went in expecting it to be bad and what a surprise! I came out thinking the same thing..."

The movie really had a number of issues that were fairly obvious. I'll begin with the camera as it became very irritating very fast. Basically instead of having the camera focus on a scene from a fixed (or nearly fixed or slowly moving) position it had to either transition in the blink of an eye to another view or do unnecessary random acrobatics. Basically the camera sometimes spun around or flipped over slowly for no reason. It also made every single transition appear like an attempt to rush the film to a less awkward scene.

I guess I'll go on to the acting... very mediocre at best. You could easily see this in the hospital scene at the end when Bella just keeps on stuttering for about 10 or 15 seconds. There were no shortage of awkward moments in the film in which I almost felt embarrassed for the actors. This also may have had something to do with the writing for the movie being really bad.

Now the writing for the script was really awful. It basically had the bad actors spouting laughable lines that... well you just have to see the movie to feel ow awkward it is. (I know I use awkward a lot in this review, but that's the one word that seems to sum it all up).

Now on to the visual appeal of it all. The vampires and Bella the main human character seem to have exactly the same skin color despite vampires supposedly being pale. It also didn't help that Bella had dyed black hair accentuating her white skin. Also, only some of the vampires were really pale and all of the male vampires had randomly messy hair (with an exception). Now Edward had severe makeup problems. All of his makeup was easy to see and accentuated by countless close ups on his face and dear god I could not stop staring at his eyebrows. You could hide a small nation in them. I was just really bothered by his ridiculously over sized eyebrows. All of the fights and jumping was obviously done with a harness. You could see it quite easily in the film and it was truly hilarious when James (the "bad" vampire) jumped at Bella doing a weird flying crouch-grab.

The plot... I have never read any book in the Twilight series, so this is just from what I saw in the movie. Everything felt rushed as if they were trying to cover some huge expansive plot, but couldn't leave everything in, (which is to be expected in any movie adaptation from a book) and this led to some really bad time transitions. Every single transition took a split-second even if it was a months long chase or a passage of two minutes. This made it feel like the whole movie took place over the time span of a few days. It also doesn't help that all the romance in the movie really looked like a normal awkward teenage relationship changing from mutual dislike or hate into strange love. I also didn't really get anything like an attraction to Edward by Bella in anything but her words and obvious actions. No subtle hints or anything remotely close to that.

I really can't sum up all of the things that were flawed in the film, but I can tell you of my personal bias against it from before I even set eyes on it. I knew that the vampires wouldn't act like vampires. Do vampires no longer need to subsist on human blood now? Can they just take down elk instead? And why must they sparkle in the light as if they have glitter all over them? I also noticed a distinct lack of any real actions that would make them appear actually older than they look. I wouldn't expect a 100+ year old vampire to act like the 17 year old he appears as when he doesn't need to protect his identity. When I think of vampires I think of darkness, coffins, bats, gaseous forms, supernatural powers, and ancient brooding intelligence and wisdom, not a bunch of regular people with magical strength and speed and a need to live on blood. Oh, and why the hell were they playing softball? That was just odd.

Like I said I just can't describe all of the movie's flaws, but trust me, they never seem to end. I give it a 3.5/10 because it did just barely manage to hold my attention to the end. It really was aimed at an audience of teenage girls, but the result looked like a beanie bopper's vampire movie. Oh, and is it odd that watching Twilight made me want to watch Hellsing OVA again?

So, I wasn't going to do this album review mainly because I didn't expect to have the album. It's rare enough for there to be only one album of it on all of ebay. Anyway, it's basically Into Eternity's first album and it was individually produced before they got signed onto anything. So, I'll be listening to it for the first time with this review, so yeah. Stick around for when I edit it all up.


The tracklist is as follows:
Torn
Sorrow
Left Behind
The Modern Day
A Frozen Escape
Behind The Disguise
Holding Onto Emptiness
Into Eternity
Speak Of The Dead
Silence Through Virtue

Sounds pretty bleak... I can already tell that I'll like it. I'd like to apologize for any random spelling errors I make in advance because I'm going to be typing as I listen with no pauses.

1) Torn (4/5):
Starts with a strange set of voices going, what sounds like a fire burning, and other vague awesomeness going on. And then a cry of despair. And then the music comes in with an awesome drum beat going followed by equally awesome guitar and bass. It sounds vaguely futuristic, but... well as I was typing this a synth-alterred voice came in and shattered whatever else I was going to say. The growls beneath it aren't that good, but are understandable and improve as the song progresses. The clean vocals are obviously changed, but sound good. So far I would have never guessed that this was independantly produced. The repeating riff going on is quite nice. It's not a standout track so far, but a really good one still. which is up to Into Eternity's standards. I also like the fade out growling that they do throughout the track. I think the one thing I don't like is the random breaks in the sound that have occured twice. They just stopped the track and jumped to a different tempo rather than meshing it all together. It just doesn't seem to work in the track.

2) Sorrow (3.5/5):
Another nice little intro here with some piano for about 10 seconds before a growl and some riffing came in. I'm really liking the synth-alterred voices now. They just seem to work. They fit the mood more than the growling does, but when both are used it seems to work. Still, the meshing of the two styles of music is a bit rougher than their later albums, but there's a lot of emotion in the clean vocals and.. GUITAR SOLO. Sorry about that, but I'm typing and it shattered my thoughts. It's a nice solo, but it doesn't have too much emotion in it. Still, it's a good track so far. I think the best parts are the random little riffs you sort of hear in the back of it all. And the screams and growls that are in the background. I think the vocals could have used a bit more volume in the track though. The screams this are more like metalcore than black metal in this album so far. It's a bit different, but not bad. Oh, and the outro is quite interesting on this track.

3) Left Behind (3.75/5):
We've got a bit of Spanish sounding guitar and more clean vocals with several different vocalists making up a staggered chorus. It's nice. The transition to the electric guitar could have been better, but it's still sounding good. I still wish the vocals were louder though. I like it a lot more than the song of the same name by Slipknot though. I'm getting a subliminal sort of vibe from the vocals now and it's starting to grow on me. It feels like the vocals are worming their way through my head rather than me actually hearing them. This track is like the last one... but different. Also, no growling in it for those of weak ears.

4) The Modern Day (4/5):
It begins with some odd talking. "Are you ok?" "No man, I'm pretty [stifled squealing]f*cking far from ok..." And BAM there's the riff. It kind of cascades up and down like a mini-scale run comprised of three notes in an arpeggio or something. It sounds pretty ok. And now the vocals are here. They're sounding better. This is definitely starting to grow on me already. Oh, and because of the title I'm gonna be looking up the lyrics later. There's a weird growl going on now. I kind of like it. The vocals are getting louder though which is a good/bad thing. This song isn't subliminal like the others though, so it's probably a good thing. Oh, and the harmonies are starting to shine through now. I think the black metal screams work a lot better than these metalcore ones though with the growling and all. Hmm. It's a very good independantly produced album thus far though especially as an initial album. I'm definitely listening to this when I go skiing tomorrow. The growling's gotten better now. There's some weird techno-ish stuff going on in the vocals near the end that I like. No special outro on this one.

5) A Frozen Escape (4.5/5):
Begins with some rainfall and light thunder. And now some more monologue stuff. "Difficult to harm these people not selected to build weight onto another day." Or something like that. I'll look it up later. It then enters with a nice little chord and vocal build up. The guitar then starts doing arpeggios and the vocals are really shining through in it. This is definitely supposed to be the emotional track and thus far it is succeeding. They're doing some nice stuff with added echoes in the voices and some synth stuff going on as well. It's really... pretty for lack of a better word. I really like it. Not much more to say except that the drums came in and I think a guitar solo began. More talking interjecteed in there for about one second while the solo's going. It's a powerful song, but I'm not sure what it's saying yet. I'll find out later.

6) Behind the Disguise (4.5/5):
Begins with a gunshot (or something) and then some heavy riffing. And some synth in the back that I'm liking. It's now got some really nice guitar/synth going. I'm really liking this. BASS INTERLUDE! Enter the vocals which are strained internal growls that are going quite nicely. Now we've got some clean vocals that are nice, but lacking in the real voice of the last track. Still, they mesh with the guitar nicely. Hmm. It's being a little repetitive, but wait, there's the solo. It's much better than the one featured a while back. And it came at just the right time. And now some more of that synth/guitar dual riffing that I like. With blast beats too. And random soloing for the outro. It's another really good track here.

7) Holding Onto Emptiness (4.75/5):
That title reminds me of the lyrics in Nothing, a song from their fourth album (if you include this one). Anyway, it begins with an organ or synth or something that sounds rather nice. Enter the drums. It reminds me of the Halo 2 soundtrack... sort of. Now there's bass. It sounds like... like I'm walking through a valley shrouded in mist and mystery with a heavy atmosphere of awe... or something. And enter the death growl and guitar. It's a lot more powerful with that synth still in the back. It's a very interesting track. It could easily be the best on the album at this rate. The clean vocals are once again powerful with the help of the bass and synth. The guitar is a lot better than in the other tracks. This is probably going to be my favorite track on the album. Enter soloing. Again, better than the previous tracks. This track is rather emotional too, but not overtly so. Oh, and it's got a fake ending! I love those. I really like the weird synth things they're doing in this song. It fades in and out at times. A very good track. Very good. No real big outro.

8) Into Eternity (5/5):
Again with the pleasent intro. It's very peaceful. Almost relaxed even. The guitar faded out and the vocals came in and it reentered. This is another very moving song. Another big highlight too thus far. More emotional than A Frozen Escape was too. I'm really liking it. Also, I'm catching a lot more of the lyrics in this song than the others. And the electric guitar has entered, but not lost any of the emotion present in the song. I'm really, really, liking this song. Hm. Very good track. And abrupt change to spanish themed guitar without losing the emotion. This is going quite well.

9) Speak Of The Dead (3/5):
It begins with some muffled coughing and the words "And now it begins." or something like that and then launches head first into some heavy riffing. And now it's gotten all rhythmic and strangely uplifting. I think there's some synth piano in the background at times, but that might just be my mind wandering. Either way, the vocals have reduced in power and the guitar is decent. The riff is kind of getting repetitive again... I notice that you can hear the drums more on this track than the others. The growls in this one are more cookie monster-ish than demonic in this one. Oh, but that synth changed growl was awesome. Oh, and the synth solo is better than the guitar one in this song. But it didn't last long enough... This is an odd song. You'll have to listen to it to really understand why I said that. The vocals are really in the background on this song, but the instrumentalization isn't that good. Not a good follow up to Into Eternity.

10) Silence Through Virtue (3/5):
It begins with a pulsating bass drum and some nice synth with a bit of a hi-hat roll that leads up to some heavy staccato guitar riffing. It sounds nice and the blast beat that's come in strangely works with the vocals right now. The vocals are again closer to the forefront of the sound. Oh, and another BASS INTERLUDE! *Ahem* the growls came in kind of awkwardly, but they quickly left the vocals alone. There's a real emphasis on the drums in this song for some reason. BASS INTERLUDE 2! And the growls came in better this time. This song is getting across half-way. And the guitar solo isn't quite loud enough when it comes in, but that's quickly fixed. It's kind of nice. Growl vocal highlight right there 30 seconds from the end. It's deciding to end the album aggressively, but with a really soft synth ending.

This album started out ok, built up to a good song, and then an awesome song, and then faded into the iffiness again. It's still very good and hard to tell that it was a first album let alone an individually produced work. I'm gonna give it a 4/5 and it's easily worth the search for a copy of this album. It's only ever been released in Canada, so you'll have a bit of a hard time getting a copy of it, and good luck finding any of the songs anywhere. Anyone who wants to hear it will have to get the music from me I guess. Alas, that's all I have to say. I hope my spelling wasn't too bad in this.

Ok. I told... someone I'd do this, but I don't remember who exactly. Anyway, right now I'm listening to as much Disney pop as I can stand in one sitting before I burst from the pretentious extremes. And I've so far only had to listen to 2 Jonas Brothers songs before feeling a pit in my stomach. It's just bad. You can tell that no real thought was put into the songs and you can also tell that they're manufactured just by listening to the sound quality. It's very obvious that there was some synth altering in the voices, the guitars are just playing power chords and the drums never do more than simple fills. It's just horribly meh and is suffering from the Twilight syndrome of being toted as the best where it should not be. I also love how people like the Jonas Brothers are called hot because they're backed by Disney and are in a band, but in real life they'd probably get the crap beaten out of them for being so pretentious and annoying. Also... why did they have to cover "Those Poor Unfortunate Souls" from The Little Mermaid... really? It's just... awkward. Really, all of their songs look extremely easy to reproduce instrumentally too. I see nothing difficult, even remotely so, to play in any of their songs on any instrument... They're obviously a manufactured Disney band running on image before they die out sometime next year and get replaced.

Now I'm moving on to Miley Cirus/Hannah Montana. She's just a pretty face from the sound of it. She's an ok singer, but there's nothing special about her even when simply considering Disney Pop. The instruments are again bad with the synth being obvious in the vocals and the instruments aren't even really given any highlights in the songs. It's just really really dumbed down music... Again. This is a trend in most pop, but Disney Pop just seems to exemplify it all. I can't really say why these artists have gotten popular besides simply saying one thing... they're Disney. That's all the publicity they'll ever need. Without fail Disney backed artists always rise to stardom for a year or two and then die down to never be heard from again. The worst thing though is that they're almost all examples of bad pop that gets more popular than everything else. But what can I say? Their target audience is the lowest common musical denominator. 12 year old girls... *sigh*

Good pop exists. You need look no farther than Michael Jackson's Smooth Criminal, Earth Song, and Billy Jean to see that. There are also pop rock bands that have made good songs (well some of it's glam/pop metal, but whatever) such as Journey's Any Way You Want It, or Don't Stop Believin' or Boston's Foreplay/Longtime, Peace of Mind, etc. Good pop exists, but it isn't listened to much anymore when compared to the huge cash cows of the Disney Pop genre. Disney Pop is simply weak dumbed down music listened to by people with no real taste in music who can identify with the image. So yeah, continue to listen to that terribly mediocre or even horrible music while others can listen to millions of artists who have achieved more, but gained less.

My little response to Vivek's note as per request.

1) The Ministry Of Lost Souls - Dream Theater
You need only listen to the first five seconds to know that this 15 minute long epic is going to be impossibly sad. It's the tale of a spirit's longing to help another soul enter paradise before she is lost to the void. Really though, just listen to it... it's just amazingly sad, relaxed, hopeless, but still manages to find a happy ending.
Pt. 1 (I could only find the poor quality live version on YouTube. Sorry about that.)
Pt. 2 &feature=response_watch

2) Severe Emotional Distress - Into Eternity
This song clearly goes out to anyone who's ever been depressed, cut themselves, etc. The song is strangely sad yet hopeful... you wouldn't call it sad unless you can directly relate to the lyrics though.


3) Darkness - Disturbed
This is an obviously spiritual and melancholy lament to the intolerance in many people. This is not surprising seeing as how the song was the last on the Believe album. It's a very good power ballad and a great song to sing along to.


4) Swing Swing - The All American Rejects
This is an obviously superficial song with very bad lyrics and yet it somehow manages to convey a lot of emotion despite being very cliche and simply being... well... Just too obviously teenage angst/relationship feelings after a break up. It's surprising that it manages to be a good song despite its shortcomings.


5) Johanna (reprise) - Steven Soundheim (Sweeney Todd the Broadway Musical)
This song strangely has been tied to my life for some time now. You need only listen for the vocals in the song to tell that it's obviously emotional and romantic being about Antony's love for Johanna despite their distance and Sweeney's burning obsession with revenge for the love he thinks he's lost and his only child.
(Sorry I have to use the terrible movie version)

6) The Theft - Atreyu
A very good emotional song from the metalcore band Atreyu with very deep lyrics that could be describing any number of things. One of my personal favorites from the band.
&feature=PlayList&p=E355555B9B594C95&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=14

7) Digital Love - Daft Punk
Another strangely happy, but ultimately sad song. The twist with this one is that it's techno/electronica and has an amazing animated series of music videos making up the album that it's from.


8) Voice of the Soul - Death
Well, there's not that much I want to elaborate on with this seeing as it's an instrumental. Just listen to it.


9) I Died For You - Iced Earth
This is part of the Dark Saga, a concept album about Spawn (a very good comic/animated series I recommend to anyone who is mature enough to watch/read it). It tells of how Spawn sacrificed everything he had for his love of his wife and is now forever damned because of it.


10) Spiraling Into Depression - Into Eternity
This song needs no elaboration.


That's all for now folks.

Please, if this breaks any rules and deserves to be locked or is simply spammed too much then please lock this topic. I'm sure the usual idiocy will occur in this thread.

Now there are few things I truly have unconditional hate for in this world as I'm generally open to anything, but my school has managed to give me a serious dose of rage.

Now to begin I'd like to talk about the whole week and it's hype, the activities surrounding it, and the general attitude towards the dance from all the sophomores and upper classmen. Basically ever since we entered school we've been told how amazing this week is supposed to be, how much fun the dance will be, and how awesome the last year was. So, naturally everyone got pretty damn excited about the whole affair. In almost every seminar class we've been doing something to contribute to the experience of this week. We would make costumes for "field day" and write our "song" and "cheer" and each class would be recruiting and training kids for activities during field day. So, this means that a great many people spent a hell of a lot of time working on this crap.

Now let's do a rundown of how this week went. First off it's a 4 day week consisting of the following: Twin Day, Super Hero Day, Pajama Day, Field Day, and finally a day off of school for the Homecoming dance.

Twin Day: Well... not much really happens these first three days, just people dressing the way it seems, as twins. So yeah. Just a bit of an odd day to see a few identical people throughout the day.

Super Hero Day: This would have been far more interesting had they mentioned the fact that we are actually able to dress in costumes, but no; everyone went through the weeks leading up to this thinking that we'd just wear a t-shirt or something similar with a hero on it. Naturally people took this a bit far and wore... politcal shirts in a school where very few people either care or are able to vote in the presidential elections. Don't try to explain how either candidates are like Super Man, as I will not listen to it.

Pajama Day: Wooo, people just didn't dress for school. Too bad it had to be pajama day or I would have gone to school butt naked.

Field Day: This was one of the two things that were supposed to be really fun during this week. We spent weeks preparing for this day... so why did it suck so bad? We basically finished our school day at 12:00 got in our themed costumes (Freshmen:Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Sophomores:The Hulk, Juniors:Spider Man, Seniors:Bat Man) and went down to the gym where people were screaming chants or just simply yelling to be heard. So our 600 person Freshman class had to try and cram into a 50 foot wide 8 row set of bleachers. Needless to say we were quite cramped. We then got to listen to a huge amount of announcements and then we did our cheer and song. It's not fun to listen to 600 bored Freshmen sing or chant about how we're teenage freshmen ninja turtles and how we're supposed to be superior to the sophomores. It's worse when the other classes did the same in their equally -blam!- chants and songs. Then we got to events and we basically watched random people do random physical competitions with their opposing class. I sat through three of these and then saw my seminar teacher looking for a volunteer to compete and I thought "Why not? I'm not having fun as it is, so I might as well join in." Unfortunately the guy I was going to replace found his way back and I was left outside the gym with nothing to do, but go back to that hellish din of 2,000 screaming teens and their boring events, so I just walked around for 2 hours of boredom without my ears being raped any longer. Maybe I need to have school spirit to enjoy it, but I really don't buy into that stuff.

Now on to the Homecoming Dance. The event that was supposed to be life changing, hell it was almost as hyped up in our school as Halo 3 was prior to release! I'll say right now that I want the $25 admission given back to me and a few hundred dollars given to me for almost forcing me to stay at the damn thing. I went in, paid the admission fee and went down to the gym where the dance was being held. So I went in with my small group of friends and we were treated to some very loud rave music. This wasn't so bad and I could see people listening to it, but immediately after a rap song came on. So, we decided not to dance until it went off as it was the mainstream crap you tend to hear which makes most people hate rap. Unforetunately what we thought would be a random exception turned out to be the only kind of music they would play besides some very poor pop music. There was no underground rap being played, only lesser known mainstream rap songs attempting to garner the fame of everyone's favorite mainstream rapper Soulja Boi. This continued without end for what I believe was two and a half hours straight with the only exceptions being 4 minutes of Thriller and Don't Stop Believin'. That was quite simply ear -blam!-.

That alone wasn't enough though. Our $25 admission fee covered drinks and food. So this must be pizza and soda right? RIGHT? Wrong, it was sugar free grocery brand cookies and water from a drinking fountain. Then we must have paid for a DJ and the lights right? Well I sure hope not, because I think the school rented some 4 huge amps and hooked them up to a computer with iTunes and had 2 administrators cycle through a playlist and the lights were just a disco ball and a few randomly spinning and color changing lights. And then there was the dancing... oh god. Just imagine 1,000 kids with very poor taste in music, who have no idea what the concept of dance is beyond simply moving or grinding all simultaneously dancing to very very poor quality music with basic beats. Then imagine that they all somehow know the lyrics to every song except the aforementioned 2 exceptions. So, I was treated to the sight and sounds of 1,000 kids wriggling in a huge mass singing random rap and pop songs and I paid to go to this.

There's so much that I could talk about as far as what happened at the dance that simply bored my friends and myself out of our minds and that garnered out collective hatred, but I could rant on that for hours longer. So, I'll leave it with three simple lessons that I've learned from this and a single rule I need to remember to follow:
Never ever believe the hype of anything no matter what it is. You can only be dissapointed.
1) My school has worse taste in music then I thought it did. Rap, Pop, and disney pop idol music is all they seem to enjoy.
2) Never go to any school event held by my high school ever again.
3) No one there can dance. I did the thriller dance basic steps during Thriller (I was dressed pretty much like a darker Michael Jackson, so what could I do? I also do know the dance pretty well since I had to do it in a play I was in over the summer, so I gave it a shot.) and a crowd formed around me and some people tried to join me... How hard is slide, shimmy, zombie claws, back step, and a simple march to do? People tripped, fell, and simple failed at all attempts to do this very simple dance and generally interfered with my own performance. Ugh.

I hope your high school dances were slightly better if you attended them. Once more, I feel like I should have been paid to be there because I felt like I needed to stay because of my friends and my own investment and the simple hope of it ever improving. That was simply terrible in every sense of the word.

Please excuse my spelling, but it's 1:48 right now... Oh my what a wall of text... Once again if this should be locked then please do with all due haste.