Fender, Roland, and BOSS sign on as sponsors for the upcoming Rock Band game. That means the game peripherals will be Fender "guitars," Roland "synths," and BOSS "pedals." Although there is good news in that you'll be able to use your Guitar Hero controllers with Rock Band.

There's not a lot of information out there about Rock Band yet. Other than it's probably not going to be available on PS2, which means that if I want to play it I'm going to need a new console. But whatever-- the game will be playable online, where you can actually form "bands" and "play" the songs together. Now we've got confirmation there will at least be guitars (with effects!) and synths/keyboards, and it's been hinted there will be drums. No word on how drums will be implemented, though.

Reading this little news bit this morning made me wonder how complicated the game will be or how important it will be to have multiple players at the same time (and whether I would even want to bother playing it-- which, honestly, I probably will), and I was thinking of writing and expanding on that, but maybe later. Any other Guitar Hero players have any thoughts on Rock Band?

Reason #541236 to hate Myspace: I didn't realize the computer speakers were on, and while I was moving the mouse to log into the site some damned ad just screamed "HI!" at me and I almost had a fucking heart attack.

Well done, advertisers! If people hate your banner ads enough, they're sure to buy your product. GRRRRRRRRRRRR.

Happy late birthday to cleversticks! Sorry I couldn't make your thing today, I was kind of in a coma.

It's about 6:20 a.m. and I got home from the Music Box Theatre Sci-Fi Spectacular about 10 minutes ago. It ran about three hours long, so by the time it was over public transportation was running and I managed to avoid spending $10 on a cab ride home. It was really fun, I'll have to do a thorough write-up on it later.

However! One thing that made me extremely happy very early in the day was seeing the flyers for the upcoming Music Box Massacre 3! For those of you unfamiliar, the Music Box Massacre is a 24-hour horror movie marathon usually held on the second weekend in October. Naturally, I'm going to be constantly watching for tickets to go on sale. They sold out pretty quickly last year, and I literally look forward to this more than anything else all year. It is like Christmas for me.

So far the tentative lineup includes Halloween 3 (because it's the 3rd year), Black Christmas (the original!), A Bucket of Blood (Roger Corman beatnik horror film from the 60s!), Fright Night (HELL YES!) and Videodrome. Repeat: Videodrome.

I've been up since 9 a.m. yesterday, so just one last thing before I go collapse for the remainder of the day: for some reason the print of The Terminator that was shown at the Sci-Fi Spectacular had Spanish subtitles on it. During the prologue, a voiceover read the story introduction text in Spanish, leading us all to believe that the film itself was going to be in Spanish. It was almost a disappointment when it wasn't.

Just got back from seeing Spider-Man 3 with msari. A few quick thoughts:

+ Bryce Dallas Howard as Gwen Stacy. Seriously, if the movie had just been two hours and twenty minutes of her hanging out and doing stuff, I would have had no qualms calling it the best film Sam Raimi has ever made, and it would be in competition for Best Movie Of All Time.

- Gwen Stacy is in the movie for literally about fifteen minutes.

- The twenty minutes or so in the middle of the movie where everything stops dead so Peter Parker (under the influence of the alien symbiote-- just Google "Spider-Man," "black suit," "Venom," etc.) can dance around like a jackass. Embarrassing.

+ Bruce Campbell's cameo. You knew it was coming, but not like this. It's genius.

+ The alien symbiote and Venom looked pretty awesome.

- Venom is in the movie for literally about ten minutes. Maybe not even that.

+/- Interesting take on the Sandman character, and of course he looks spectacular-- reportedly the most expensive special effect ever created, he damn well better. But again, he's not given a whole lot to do. And his exit from the film is just weird.

- Actually, the whole ending is just weird. I really think Sam Raimi just couldn't figure out what to do with it.

+/- When Peter is under the control of the symbiote, he looks like a member of Fall Out Boy. If he had been wearing guyliner, it would have been perfect.

Overall, the film suffers from a serious case of Batman Returns-- too many characters for one movie. The whole Venom/Carnage storyline could easily have been its own film, and having the character shoehorned into this film was severely disappointing.

All that said, I would gladly pay to see the film again just for Bryce Dallas Howard. Seriously.

Is anyone else going to The Music Box Sci-Fi Spectacular this weekend? I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to get home afterwards-- I'm getting there via walking my ass off and taking a bus of some sort, I imagine, but the thing's not going to be over until like 3 or 4 a.m.

I must confess I'm a little annoyed at some of the last-minute changes made to the schedule. Starship Troopers has been added as the last film of the night, and Serenity is now playing really early (scheduled for 4:30 p.m.). I'm excited to see Starship Troopers on the big screen, but that automatically adds 2+ more hours. At this point, it seems like they might as well have gone for another 24-hour event. Oh well. None of this really means anything, it's still going to be awesome, it's mostly just that I'm always looking for an excuse to spend more time in a theatre.

Some potentially bad news: If you didn't buy tickets for The Pipettes at the Empty Bottle on June 7th, they're sold out.

http://www.glamour.com/news/articles/2007/01/purityballs07feb

Holy shit.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

From Gorezone:
THE MONSTER SQUAD: Lionsgate Home Entertainment released the official word on specs for its 20th Anniversary DVD special edition of Fred Dekker’s THE MONSTER SQUAD will be released July 24. The movie will be presented in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio for the first time ever on North American video; the special features are:
• Audio commentary by writer/director Dekker and cinematographer Bradford May
• Audio commentary by Dekker and actors Andre Gower, Ashley Bank and Ryan Lambert
• Wolf Man’s Got Nards! The Making of THE MONSTER SQUAD documentary
• Deleted and extended scenes
• Monster Mania reunion featurette
• Vintage interview with Tom Noonan (in Frankenstein’s monster makeup!)
• Poster and still gallery
• Theatrical trailer
• TV spot


-----------------------------------------------------

In other news that I don't know how I feel about: Michael Haneke's upcoming remake of his own film Funny Games is confirmed to be "...literally a shot-for-shot remake" according to the film's producer Linda Moran. "...so we haven’t changed the ending or anything like that."

Even weirder: "We actually had blueprints from the house that was used in the original, and we went on a soundstage and built a set that matched those proportions exactly."

So... wait, what?

HOT FUZZ IS PLAYING AT THE DAVIS STARTING TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!

Maybe I should just take a nap for the next couple months. This is ridiculous.

THE PIPETTES ARE COMING TO THE EMPTY BOTTLE THURSDAY 7 JUNE 2007.

Related: How far away is Minneapolis? They're playing there Friday 8 June 2007, and I'm thinking of asking for those two days off work. Who's with me?

Last night, the Ticketweb site said the tickets for Brand Upon the Brain go on sale today at noon.

This morning, the Ticketweb site says the tickets for Brand Upon the Brain go on sale tomorrow at noon.

What gives?

Yesterday is a weird blur. I don't really remember what I did. I'm okay with that.

Today! Went with horty_pie to see Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters and Hot Fuzz. A few quick words:

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters is exactly what you would expect, provided you expect an episode of the show that's about 90 minutes long. They weren't kidding in the trailer when they said the movie has "five characters and two new backgrounds." There are more than five characters (though not many more), but most of it looks like it was just lifted directly from the show. Including the animation. It's probably not a good introduction to the concept and the characters-- any 12-minute episode will do, really-- but for rabid fans it should more than suffice that this was actually produced by a major studio and released in theaters.

Hot Fuzz is the new film from many of the people who made Shaun of the Dead. It's excellent, although the pace is much more leisurely than Shaun of the Dead. After how well-received Shaun was, expectations were high for this film. It wasn't as frenetic as I was expecting (the trailers helped feed into this), since the first hour and a half is basically all setup for the last act. Which actually is ridiculous action-movie eye candy. The flair that Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg showed for creating great characters the audience really feels invested in has carried over from the first film, which is fantastic. I'm anxious to see it again-- Shaun of the Dead was loaded with references and background jokes that took several views to catch, and I'm sure Hot Fuzz is no different.

joanofarrgh and I watched the first part of the recent Masterpiece Theatre production of Bleak House (starring Gillian Anderson and a bunch of British people, including one guy who kind of looks like Crispin Glover and Ian Richardson-- the very definition of British Badass). I admit I'm hooked and can't wait to see the next part next Sunday night. Or, failing that, get it from Netflix. The way the film is shot is very contemporary, which is interesting. There are a lot of long tracking shots that look as though they were shot handheld (which is cool) and some weird quick-cut scene transitions (which can be a tad jarring). I'm not usually into this sort of thing-- or am I? Again, I should probably get more of it from Netflix.

I watched the first half of Street Trash the other night before I realized I was completely exhausted and went to bed. I have yet to finish it, and I'm completely exhausted again. So not tonight, then.

So sleepy.

Coffman vs. Escalator, Escalator Wins Every Time.

Not sure how I managed to avoid spilling my coffee.

If the commercial failure of Grindhouse has taught us anything, it's this: the American moviegoing public doesn't want to pay one admission price to see two movies unless they're paying to see Epic Movie and sneaking into Norbit afterwards.

I bought Stella: Season One and the new Stars of the Lid album with my "tax return" (read: paycheck). From what little I've heard so far, the Stars of the Lid album sounds exactly like the last one. So that should be good.

I added about six more comics to my pull list today. Tomorrow there will be violence done to my bank account, I imagine.

Time to watch Street Trash. I've heard good things.

Holy CARP, Grindhouse dropped from 4th place at the box office last week to 10th this week. Look for those individual features to be in theatres post-haste.

New rule for 2007! If you didn't see at least one of the following films in theatres this year, you don't get to bitch about horror remakes until 2008: Grindhouse, The Abandoned, or Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. Where do I contact whoever it is who runs the internet to get this instituted?

I watched Stranger Than Fiction tonight. I liked it very much. It almost made me cry-- like a girl.

Related to nothing: Roger Martinez took down his blog archives today. Dammit.