I just want to say a quick congratulations to the Irish football team who played a stunning game tonight. The nation are proud of you. They worked together as a solid team and they really deserved more from tonights game. The Henry incident was a pity, but I believe that he acted on instinct and did what most players would've done in his place. The linesman should've seen what happened - unfortunately he didn't. This is what happens in football today; you win some, you lose some.

Congratulations to the whole squad. I look forward to seeing the team play in the future.

last.fm

Anybody out there? *looks around* Nope. I suppose I don't update this thing enough to warrant any visitors. Hopefully I'll be able to update more regularly once this semesters exams are done with. So much work to do... ugh.

Anyhow, I set up a last.fm profile a long time ago and rarely ever used it. But after seeing a few Boards.ie posters using it, I jumped back into it. Damn it's good. I've got recommendations flying at me left, right and centre. I'm using the Neighbourhood radio station right now and so far I've yet to hear something that hurts my ear. I'm definitely going to have to subscribe. I'd heard the band Los Campesinos! on Phantom and I just could not understand why anybody would've gone to see them at Oxegen '08 rather than Rage Against the Machine. I still cannot understand that. But after hearing Los Camp. on last.fm I realise that those who did choose to see them aren't as crazy as I once thought. They're still crazy though.

Actually thinking about it, that has to be the worst clash I've experienced at a music festival. Ian Brown, RATM and the Chemical Brothers all played at the same time. It was an easy choice for me to pick but I still would've loved to see the other two.

Anyhow my last.fm profile is here. Any adds are welcome, but if you add me you must recommend me at least one track. Pleeeese!

The Beatles remastered!

Yesterday the original Beatles catalogue was re-released. The albums (12 in total) are re-mastered and have all the original album art. I've heard various reports about the re-mastered CDs so far; some people are delighted, but what seems to be the general consensus is that they're not great (aside from the first four albums). I've yet to get my own copies. I was debating getting the box set which has all the re-mastered albums along with some limited edition stuff. That was until I checked out the prices.

Some HMV advert on Sky advertised each remastered CD at the price of £11.99 in the UK. By the time I got into HMV in town it was closed, but on the window advert each CD was proced at €15.99. So HMV's Irish customers get slapped with a mark-up of €2.30. Doesn't sound like much but that's a mark-up of just over 16%.

Another great reason why music lovers should avoid shopping in HMV and stick with the homegrown music stores like Tower Records.

District 9 - My Verdict

As of now my tiny blog will be upgraded from my music thoughts to my opinion on film too. I need to vent my opinion somewhere, so I thought here was the place to do it - where probably nobody will read it. So in that case, I won't be available to engage in a critical discussion about it. FYI, I really suck at debating.

So, a quick show of hands as to who did not like District 9? Right... so I'm the only person then?
I cannot understand how everybody likes District 9. I seem to be one of the few people who thought it was an absolutely terrible film. What's up with that?

So where to start...

Lets look at the storyline. Aliens (prawns) come to earth from space in that huge 'pizza like' ship, get torn out of their 'home' and stuck in what resembles a low security Nazi death camp. Why did the 'prawns' come to earth? We're not told. I mean ok, they want to leave it open so they can make a sequel if this film makes them enough money (which I can only presume it does), but you think they'd give us some indication of why the aliens are on earth? The 'prawn' language is understood (it seems) and they understand English, so you'd think that the aliens would be quizzed about their coming to earth, no?

This takes me to another point; why are the aliens portrayed as morons? Their vastly superior and sophisticated weaponry, along with their ability to travel through space puts the intellectual level of the 'prawn' instantly above that of the human. So why are they reduced to living in this slum scavenging for cans of cat food? If Christopher Johnston has the cop-on to spend his time on earth looking for that alien fuel, you think that a lot more of them would join in and help him out? He plans on going back to his home planet to seek help, so they obviously weren't exiled and they weren't hiding from their compatriots back wherever they're from.

Throughout the film we see a hell of a lot of alien weaponry hidden throughout their shacks. If they all didn't like their living conditions, you think they would've been able to come to some agreement with the MNU. All they'd have to do is demonstrate one of their kick-ass shooters. I'm sure that nobody would've missed that Nigerian gang. The prawns could've made an example of them.

The real thing that puzzles me - why did Christopher the 'prawn' not just fly their ship home when they arrived on earth, instead of hanging around above Johannesburg? They could've scavenged for their fuel in their spaceship, and not let that 'control module'-thingy fall out of the main ship. Then they could've just gone home, we would've had no film and I would've been happy.

As an aside, I liked some aspects of the film. The alien weapons were pretty cool; insta-gib guns always are. That walker that the Nigerians bought was pretty cool (why they didn't make more of them I don't know?). The explosions and the 'electric smoke' the alien guns produced were pretty cool. The documentary style filming was a brilliant idea (much better than that farce Cloverfield), though I think they could've improved on it and used it better. The whole apartheid theme got my vote. A friend who I saw the film with told me that all the positives I've mentioned above should be enough to make me like the film. I'm afraid though, when it comes to films, its not the cool graphics that get me raving. I'm all for the storyline.

Bob Dylan: New album announced!

As a Dylan fan, I'm delighted to hear that his forthcoming album "Together Through Life" is due to be released on the 28th April. In an interview here, Dylan talks about how the album has the feel of a 1950s Sun Record, and how this one is much different from the previous "Modern Times".

I'm looking forward to getting my hands on it.

Guess who's back?

Last November Blur frontman Damon Albarn revealed that himself and Graham Coxon we're back on friendly terms, and were planning to revive Blur. One of the biggest (reads: second biggest) players in the Britpop movement is now officially back in business, and have been penciled down to play at Ireland's biggest music festival, Oxegen. There has been word that work on a new album will follow their reunion tour, but I can't seem to find confirmation of that...

Someone over at ultimate-guitar.com posted a short but sweet review of Frank Zappa's ingenious album, Shake Yerbouti. Check it out here.

As a side note, working on my studies before the Christmas break has prevented me from writing up anything here. Not that there's any readers anticipating my next post here, but I hope to put up another soon.