I watched Cabin in the Woods on the flight back. Despite starting a Kiwi actress, this film inexplicably went straight to DVD in NZ and Australia (except for a couple of film festival showings). I'm not a big fan of the horror genre, but I recognise enough to the tropes to appreciate what Joss Whedon did with this one. It was also great to see so ( Read more... )

On their just completed visit to Los Angeles, Hooch and lilenigma brought me a care package. It was composed of a packet of Milo, a jar of Marmite (Centenary edition!) and the new Shihad album, IgniteRight from the opening note, the album hits you with heavy guitars, deep drumbeats, and down-tuned treble guitar lines; more so than any of their recent albums ( Read more... )

One of the other three exciting musical moments of my weekend was similar to my discovery of the "new" EP from The Nova Echo. This one, however, is harder to gratify immediately, but I think lilenigma is going to hook me up next weekend.

It is, the "new" Shihad album, Ignite. It came out in September, but I didn't hear about it until this weekend when, on ( Read more... )

Awww man!

The Wellington Town Hall was a bit smaller than that at Christchurch, more like the size of The Civic, but with a mezzanine. We arrived halfway through Luger Boa's set (four piece: vocals/guitar, guitar, bass, drums). They're pretty experienced rockers with the frontman from big-in-Japan The D4 and they were excellent: great stage presence, great ( Read more... )