JulioBiason.Net

On the post about Final Fantasy, I realized that most of the series follow the same basic premise. And yesterday, after watching the next season of “Heroes”, I realized that most TV series also follow the same idea. That’s when I came with the reverse ideas for those things:

Reverse Final Fantasy: The forces of Light and Darkness most be in balance, or the universe will explode. Unfortunately, the Light is getting over and so the Warriors of Darkness must be summoned to save the planet. To do that, they must pillage villages, destroy families, corrupt kings and such. Honestly, I think it’s cool because you’ll end doing wrong things for the right reason.

Reverse TV series: This occurred to me when I saw “Continue in the next episode” in the end of the first episode of “Heroes.” Almost every TV series starts showing the personalities of the main characters, then add some action, add some cliff-hangers, try to connect every main character in a way and (in the really well written series) it ends closing all the open plots and shows a happy ending. What I’m thinking here is a series which the first episode is the happy ending. Everyone is fine, the universe is saved, the villains are in jail… and it ends with “Continues in the previous episode.” So the whole thing is a lot of retcons over and over again, trying to explain how character X became the villain, how Y found his/her super-powers, how the city was destroyed…

IMDB synopsis:

In Thailand, John Rambo joins a group of mercenaries to venture into war-torn Burma, and rescue a group of Christian aid workers who were kidnapped by the ruthless local infantry unit.

After watching Rocky Balboa, I had great expectations about a new Rambo movie. Not that I’m a fan of the series, but what Sylvester Stallone did to the Rocky series was really amazing, in the sense that it wasn’t a boxing movie; it was something bigger than that. And now you have the story about this soldier, which in the first movie ends crying in his colonel shoulder saying that all he wanted was a plate of food. For those who don’t know, the first movie of the series was highly acclaimed by real solders, ’cause it shown a problem in the US at the time.

The second and third movies were more action movies than telling the story behind soldiers. But, then again, so were the other Rocky movies (more about boxing than the boxer), so I was hoping Sly would do the same with this series.

Too bad, I was wrong.

Although it bases itself in the conflict in Burma, the movie never really touches the people involved in it. All you have is killing and blood and gore. There is no conflicting personalities: the bad guys are bad guys, the good guys are good guys with family and all. Plain, simply, black & white and completely wrong.

Take a look at the bad guy: he is bad. He tells his soldiers to go to villages and take the kids to be his new soldiers. He does not rape women; he sodomizes little boys. His soldiers? They rape women and play games like “walk in the mined placed” with hostages. They are bad, really really bad. But the movie never really touches the fact of why they are bad. Do they hate those people? Are the sadists? The big bad guy is bad because he wants more power or does he have a vision of the unified nation (a la the “bad guy” in “Hero“, no nothing. They are bad, that’s what you need to know.

Also, the good guys are like simply good. Ok, they are troubled, but one fought in some special forces thingy and the other is trying to understand who he is and such (which he simply accept without any struggle or anything.)

Simply put, John Rambo is a movie about war, not the fighters.

It looks like, after trying all the comics, Hollywood decided to turn its eyes to the world of anime. Look this list:

• Akira, produced by Leonardo di Caprio.
• Ghost in the Shell, by Dreamworks.
• Avatar, the last Airbender, directed by M. Night Shyamalans.
• Dragon Ball Z, produced by Fox.
• Speed Racer, by the Wachoski brothers.

Anything missing? Yes. WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE BIG MECHA MOVIES?!?

I decided to write reviews of (almost) all the albums I bought on iTunes those days. I wrote all them on Last.fm, since it is a music related site, so you can read them there.

And the list is:

• Nightwish - Dark Passion Play
• On the Virg - Serious Young Insects
• Across the Universe (Soundtrack)
• Daft Punk - Alive (2007)
• Cyndi Lauper - The Body Acoustic
• Information Society - Synthesizer

I still have three more albums on my todo list:

• Gin Blossoms - New Miserable Experience
• Powderfinger - Dream Days at the Hotel Existence
• Valve - The Orange Box (Original Soundtrack)

I’ll let you guys know when those reviews are done.

One of things I really like to do, sometimes, is hear different covers of songs. Once, I had about six different versions, from different artists, of “Helter Skelter”.

Today, listening to “In The Air Tonight” (by Phil Collins), I decided to check the other versions. You can hear 30 seconds of the music before buying in on iTunes, so… why not?

And, honestly, I think they all fail to deliver the meaning of the song. They are too happy, or so indifferent to the meaning of the lyrics that they sound almost boring. Now, there are some covers that are better than the original. Like “Mad World”, covered by Gary Jules, sounds way better than the happy beat by Tears for Fears that is amazing (it also makes the song seem way longer than it should.) But “In the Air Tonight” can be called perfect in the first version. It is dark, the music behind it keeps the pace with the darkness of the lyrics that is amazing. You can feel the real meaning behind the words by just listening to the music.

By the way, if you know any good covers of mainstream songs, let me know.

After almost four years, Arjen Anthony Lucassen released the new Ayreon album, 01011001. My guess is that Arjen decided this would be the album that would connect all Ayreon stories, from the blind minstrel to the last migrator. And it does. Unfortunately, from a musical stand point, the album fails to deliver anything impressive.

The songs are completely unimaginative. Sometimes, when not paying attention to the lyrics, I thought I was hearing some other Ayreon album. The same rhythm, the same sounds… nothing new. And when Hansi Kürsch sings, it really feels like you are listening to Blind Guardian, not Ayreon (in contrast, when Mike Baker sung in “The Human Equation”, you didn’t feel like listening to Shadow Gallery. And I would dare to say that when James LaBrie sung in the same album, it also didn’t feel like Dream Theater.)

So far, I would say that’s the weakest of all the albums. But who knows, maybe that was the idea, to give people some context for the next album…

Latest Avantasia album, “Scarecrow” finally hit the market. And I finally got a copy. So, what we can say about it?

First, this is not Avatansia. Sorry about that, but it isn’t. It is not about Gabriel and his quest to save his sister, while trying to save the universe from clashing with another universe, due the actions of an evil bishop. No, not at all.

This is “Tobias Sammet’s friends - Scarecrow.”

My guess is that Tobias really liked to play with another people and decided to use the name Avantasia for this project. So, fans of Avantasia, sorry but this isn’t part III. On the other hand, for those who like melodic metal, this is an awesome album! And not just melodic metal fans, people who like power ballads will really enjoy “Cry Just a Little” and “What Kind of Love”. I would even dare to say that “What Kind of Love” beats “Farewell” in any competition, hands down.

I would give it a 4 out of 5 stars.

I hate George Clooney. Really. Every single movie he does make me like him less and less. His acting is not convincing and he doesn’t have facial expressions. Yet, every single critic says he is an awesome actor and that his latest movie, “Michael Clayton”, is so awesome it should get an Oscar. When I saw it, I wanted to pee on Clooney face and burn the theatre down, just to enjoy a little bit of my lost 2 hours in the cinema.

When I was in the plane back to Australia, I saw Ratatoule (or whatever, I don’t care if the name is wrong.) I thought it was unimaginative, boring story about “accept who you are” for kids. You know, the same thing they say in kid movies over and over again. I mean, I’m seeing that message since I was a kid. Yet, critics say that the Academy should reconsider its position about the movie, as it was ranked higher than the “best movie” movies.

Really, critics don’t know movies.

I just saw on /Film that there is a new new Ironman trailer. Now, I know that a lot of people can get worried that they will screw up this one but, so far, the looks are pretty cool. The scene with the tank is a little bit weird, but it is still “cartoonish” enough. I just hope they do a gentle transition between the real life and the cartoon part, so you don’t feel like you suddenly jumped into a CGI animation.

A long time about (a year?) Nightwish split. I can recall people saying that Tarja complained that Tuomas never tell her how was the “feeling” of the song, that she had to put her own emotions on the lyrics and figure out what they really meant. I guess it was written in her open letter, after the other band mates put an open letter explaining why they decided to keep going without her.

All that time, I followed that idea: Tarja was right, Tuomas was not a good leader and she was unrightfully thrown out of the band.

And then came the new singer and the new album Dark Passion Play.

And guess what? It is really awesome. They are back in the classical/metal mix, not the somewhat-classical/kinda-pop songs. Which makes me rethink the reasons behind Tarja being thrown out. One of the reasons said in the open letter form the band said that she became “too comercial.” Now, looking back at their latest album, the pop one, it really looks like they were trying to reach a different group. You know, one not in the metal/classical area. I can’t say for sure, but maybe someone pushed the strings to that direction.

I’m changing my opinion now: Nightwish is better without Tarja.