What are Brits afraid of?

Often times I've wondered that. After all, a country that produces music as terrifying as Sabbath, mascots as terrifying as Eddie (from Iron Maiden) ... and in more recent times, The Spice Girls ... Well, I wonder no more. Here's the list:

   
1. Spiders
   
2. Terrorists
   
3. Snakes
   
4. Heights
   
5. Death
   
6. A visit to the dentist

Which means you'd rather be taken hostage at gun-point that hit an inoffensive creature with a newspaper. Go figure.

The Motorcycle Diaries 7/10

Talk about contentious ratings! :-)

I went to see The Motorcycle Diaries on Saturday night. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice movie, but I don't rate it as highly as the others in the group. I thought the script was a little ... wishy-washy (that's the official scientific term). I didn't see the evolution of Ernesto Guevara into the firebrand that he became in the 50's. The movie meandered from one encounter to another, not really solidifying the experiences of one or its effect on subsequent ones. In other words, the movie was like a collection of patchwork stories.

This was probably a result of making an adaptation from a book. However, books are able to parcel these little chapters and present a unified whole. This movie couldn't.

The other gripe I had was that the movie was a bit too long - I think about 15 minutes should've been lopped off. Some chapters didn't really add much to the movie (like the Chilean mechanic and his wife at the dance).

I appreciate the casting - Gael García Bernal as Ernesto Guevara de la Serna and Rodrigo De la Serna as Alberto Granado - who really carried off the movie. The former looked eeirily like the real Che Guevrea (or at least, the photos I've seen of him!). Alberto Granado, according to Wikipedia (see link below) was a bit of a revolutionary himself ... but turned out to be a comic foil in the movie. Movie adaptation license at play?

Nice movie, funny in parts, but considering the subject material, I think a more serious and cohesive movie should've been made.

BTW, Wikipedia has a nice bio of Che Guevara here.

The Scandal Generator

I'd seen this around before, but never played about with it. It's part of Comedy Central's "Indecision 2004" program. It's pretty funny, give it a whirl.

I didn't want to post the extremely funny results here, for fear of someone taking it too seriously!

Mein Tiel

The funda behind the song is gruesomely interesting.

Does anyone remember the German sensational affair last year of some whacked out dude posting a message on the Net (or something similar) for a 18-35 year old he could kill and eat? And that some other whack job actually showed up? The story can be read up on at the BBC ... well this song is about that.

I was tripping on the song enough to look for translation of the lyrics. And trust me, it's gruesome! The verse talks about what it'd feel like to kill & eat a person and the pre-chorus bridge goes:

Denn du bist/ was du isst/ und ihr wisst/ was es ist ... which translates into ...

Because you are/ what you eat/ and you know/ what it is

The song itself is soul-crushing industrial metal. Repeated hearings have given me headaches! Cool!

Boy Bands Gone Bad

haven't watched Resident Evil: Apocalypse yet, but I am totally tripping out on 2 songs from it's soundtrack. One's Rammstein's "Mein Teil" (German for "My Thing").

The other song is one that I recommend to everyone on this group. It's very radio-friendly and very catchy. It's also very morbid ... a pleasant combination, I might add. It's rare that one hears a radio-friendly pop-oriented number on teen suicide. Some of you know the song (Don't Fear) The Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult, which is about teen suicide as well. Well ....this song isn't as subtle about it's subject. :-D

The song is called  "Join Me In Death" by a Finnish group called H.I.M. (His Infernal  Majesty).

And what do I mean by pop-oriented? Think boy-band (Boyzone, Backstreet Boys, etc.) ... but H.I.M. is boy-band plus guitars on overdrive! The song actually is built on a piano-driven melody. It's Goth Metal at its most accessible.

Check it out folks. All you've got to ask yourself is one question: Are you ready to die for love tonight?