Gosh, you've really got some nice toys here.

Well, I don't know about all y'all, but I had a smashing weekend! Simply smashing!

It was kicked off by coyoteseven and I attending a LUGOLA (Lego User Group Of Los Angeles) meeting on
Saturday Morning (well, we tried for morning, but got there a little past noon).

( Dark rituals of secret societies exposed! With photos! )

And then, on Sunday, the Sibling and I went to see "Blade Runner: The Final Cut" at the Landmark.

The Landmark is a brand new theater housed in the Westside Pavilion expansion, which also contains a Barnes & Noble.
It's a rather swanky cinema with wide leather seats, stadium seating, assigned seating, high quality concessions, ushers,
announcers, and the kind of service you just don't get anymore at multiplexes. It's like The Bridge, but REALLY nice.
Tickets are $11 for evenings and weekends. Matinees are $9 on weekdays only. This is actually not too bad.
My usual theater is the Culver City Stadium 12 and charges $8.50 for matinees. They do matinees on weekends though.
But the Landmark is a heck of a lot closer to us!
The Arclight in Hollywood is also very nice, but a lot more expensive and parking is a major pain in the ass.
The Landmark has a ton of parking, since it's in a mall.
Also, the seats are wide. How wide? I can seat down and lower both armrests and be comfortable!
This has never happened at the Culver City Stadium 12 OR The Bridge Cinema! I always need to keep one armrest up!
So yeah, I think I have a new favorite theater. :)

Oh yeah, the movie!
There are new DVDs of "Blade Runner" on the way (December 18th), and a new cut of the film ("The Final Cut").
So the studio decided to do some limited screenings of the new cut on the big screen.
I've seen the film tons of times, in three different flavors: theatrical, home video, and Director's Cut.
I had no clue as to what was new with this Final Cut, so it was to be a complete surprise.
I doubted that Ridley Scott would put the narration back in (though I kinda like it), and he didn't.
The "happy ending" (stock footage of driving to the Overlook Hotel is happy?!?! :D ) was also nowhere to be seen.
So in that respect, the Final Cut is a lot like the Director's Cut. The Unicorn Dream Sequence is in there, but shorter.
Some of the scenes are longer, with extra music and dialogue. Also, Warren (no LJ) attended the Blade Runner panel at
San Diego Comic Con this year and told me that the running-through-glass scene with Zhora was reshot for the Final Cut.
In the original film, a body double did the crashing, but said body double didn't really look like Joanna Cassidy.
So they got Joanna to come back and they reshot the scene with her. And holy crap, it looks almost completely the same!
After 25 years, the film holds up rather well. It's really unique, and beautiful.
The film was projected with a Sony AltaX4 digital projection system, which the announcer claimed had resolution
"4 times higher than the highest resolution HD TV you can get at Best Buy". And holy crap, was the picture ever crisp!
If it's playing near you, you oughta check it out. It's a treat.


Goofy Moments In Home Viewing: Part 4012
Saturday Night, I was watching "Lord Of The Rings: Return of The King" Extended Edition with the Sibling. (4 hours!)
At the scene when the giant eagles show up, my brother quipped "Ouais! Voila les Américains!"
("Awright! Here come the Americans!") I laughed and replied:
"Yea! It's the 235th Tactical Squadron out of Edwards Air Force Base! Nazgul at 12 o'clock! All units break and attack!"

You had to be there...

Chicks Dig Acid

Here's some eMusic stuff that's been rockin' my iTunes jukebox and WinAmp playlists lately:


A brand new album by Eat Static?!? OH YES!!!
Behold your new intergalactic overlord! DE-CLASSIFIED!!
Eat Static was formed in 1990 by two members of the psychedelic space rock group "Ozric Tentacles".
They got interested in techno and trance and put out all sorts of wonderful flying saucer-influenced CDs on the always
fun Planet Dog label. I own pretty much all those CDs. The style ranges from breakbeat and drum'n'bass to psy-trance
(psychedelic trance or goa trance), with occassional sidetrips into jazz, lounge and latino grooves.
This new one, "De-Classified" contains a nice cross-section of tracks, with the focus being on psy-trance.
If you like Israeli trance pranksters Infected Mushroom and tribal gods Juno Reactor, you should already know Eat Static!
They're the Original Gangstas of psy-trance! And they have a sense of humor! Reprezent!

Here's one from an act I know nothing about: Bagman - "Trax"
The base style is drum'n'bass, with other stuff thrown at it: surf music, Indian beats, old school breakbeat, Japanese music.
Normal D'N'B is boring, and I only like it when it's unusual and/or when other stuff get mixed into it. "Trax" delivers.

Next is the oddly-named B(if)tek, whom I suspect of being French. ("Biftek" is slang for "roast", derived from "beefsteak")
So I Google them and sure enough, they're in fact a pair of Australian girls from Canberra! But of course! :D
They say "biftek" is Japanese for "steak". Something else the Japanese borrowed from the French. :)
Anyway, this is their first album, from way back in 1996: Sub-Vocal Theme Park.
There were only 500 CDs pressed, so it's awesome that eMusic got the rights to it and put it in the store.
The album is a collection of various tracks with different styles. I can't really pinpoint it neatly.
One track sound like mid-90s German trance a la Harthouse. One sounds like Hardfloor-style acid. One sounds like the suave
acid funk from Dr. Walker and his Cologne posse. One sounds like spaced-out psy-trance. One sounds like dream lounge.
I do know one thing: I like it. Give it up for the Aussie girls! They know how to make you move!

Meanwhile, DJ? Acucrack has a new album out. I pretty much download anything by these guys by default.
They're toured with KMFDM, so that gives you an idea of their style: techno-industrial-rock-breakeat-mayhem!
I remember buying an advance copy of their first album after sampling a few tracks on the store CD player and really liking
what I was hearing. This first album is called "Mutants Of Sound" and is available on eMusic, along with every single
DJ? Acucrack album released so far. Apparently, the actual name of the first album is the far less snappy title of
"The Mutants Are Coming And I Believe They Are Of Sound". And the number 420 has been added to every track name.
Not sure what's that all about. But it sounds exactly like my advance CD, so it's all good. Very good!
So anyway, the new one is called "Humanoids From The Deep". The style is more industrial doom drum'n'bass sci-fi.
I would recommend checking out "Mutants Of Sound" first. It's more versatile in style than "Humanoids".
The second album, "Sorted", is also very nice, with the totally unstoppable thumping "Chicks Dig Acid" track.
The drum'n'bass style is much more prominent in the third album ("The Dope King") and beyond.
The fourth album, "Mako VS Geist" is pretty good, using copious Gary Oldman samples from "The Professional" (aka "Léon").
"Death... . . ...Is whimsical today..."
It's pretty hardcore drum'n'bass though.

And finally, here's something I didn't even know existed: Ultramarine - "Companion"
Back in '90-'92, there was a band called Ultramarine that made really nice soothing English countryside ambient dub music.
It was a bit like Boards of Canada without the '70s weirdness, or The Orb without the space drugs.
I own two of their CDs: "United Kingdoms" and "Every Man And Woman Is A Star". "Companion" is a remix album for "Every Man".
It contains a few remixes and a lot of alternate versions probably made during the original album's recording sessions.
Guest remixers include Sweet Exorcist (aka Cabaret Voltaire), Coco Steel & Lovebombs (an early '90s favorite), and Spooky.
I relistened to the original tracks after getting "Companion" and I was amazed at how good that stuff was. Even after all
these years, this is primo noisemaking. I can't believe I forgot all about these two little gems in my vast CD collection.
Ultramarine makes for a nice contrast after listening to the robot apocalypse of DJ? Acucrack. :)


The computer here at work really sucks. For starters, it's really slow: it's a P4 running at 2ghz, but it has built-in
graphics, so it might as well be a PIII running at 500Mhz. Also, today between 1pm and 2pm (aka lunch), it completely
forgot what an M3U file was. It wasn't even listed in the file type directory. I had to manually recreate the M3U entry
and associate it with Winamp so I could accurately listen to eMusic preview snippets. Ridiculous!
My laptop at Amp'd ran rings around this thing, and it was only a mid-level spec machine.
I have an Athlon 1.7ghz machine with a 256meg video card at home and it's lightning fast compared to this thing.
Blargh, whatever...

Have a pleasant rest of day!