Culture in its various forms.
Life's been hectic as always with intense periods of studying (thanks to the insane literary theory courses where you have to read a helluva lot of books rather quickly while memorizing all the important stuff from them).
I was happy to find out that I had aced both the theory-centred course on comparative literature and the interpreting course. I haven't received my grade for the popular genre course yet but I'm certain that I've passed that with flying colours as well. This is good news because my schedule simply doesn't allow me to have retake exams so I have to pass the exams with at least the grade 3 (5 being the best) with one go. As one can imagine, this means intensive studying which isn't necessarily a good thing. A good example is the 700-page theory book on the history of Finnish literature (Suomen kirjallisuuden historia by Kai Laitinen) which I need to finish by February 22. There are still a lot of pages to read and make notes about, and I have no idea if I have time to memorize everything from it because the content of this book is frickin' huge (after all, it goes from pre-1155 all the way to the late 1990s). Let's hope for the best.
Choir's been quite nice, and we've got surprisingly many new members. Sadly the tenor portion still has only us "old coots". It's a lot easier to lure guys to sing in bass register but tenors (especially those who are committed enough to stick around after one rehearsal) are very, very rare. It's kind of worse now that we have a shitton of new girls singing in both soprano and alto, and even with the increased members of bass it still means that guys are severely underrepresented. The good thing about it is that there are a lot of cute new girls around which means flirtin' time. Sadly I can't accompany the choir to Italy in late spring simply because they happened to choose to have the exact date when I have a lot of exams to plow through (and yes, these are the exams on Finnish literature, thankyouverymuch) but I'm sure they'll do fine without me being around. x)
Speaking of music, I was in Helsinki last weekend to attend the so-called Sibafest in the cathedral of Uspenski (the biggest Orthodox cathedral in Finland, and it was jaw-droppingly beautiful both inside and outside) where my sister Maarit was singing with the choir of the Sibelius Academy. They performed Sofia Gubaidulina's "Hommage à Marina Tsvetajeva" and Arvo Pärt's "Nunc dimittis". The former was an unnerving screech-fest (and I mean it) as it used a lot of atonal textures while trying to depict music-wise how Marina hangs herself (based on true-life events, sadly). It's art for sure but not the type of enjoyable listen that I crave to. The latter piece was much more beautiful (and conservative) as the big choir really made the religious and bittersweet theme (based on a section about Simon in the Bible) shine through. Overall the choir pieces were quite good and the conductor Matti Hyökki really made an effort to make it all work. Sis, her boyfriend Jarkko, mom, dad and I then returned to Tampere for the rest of the weekend and spent the time hanging around at sis's apartment.
Jarkko showed me a few bits from Batman: Arkham Asylum game which looked very interesting (it was great hearing Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy reprise their roles as Joker and Batman, respectively). The bits I saw was sneaking/stalking/fighting through a horde of mooks on the way to Killer Croc's lair (that lair was creepy, btw), escaping from the lair, going on a weird platformer acid trip thanks to Scarecrow's fear toxin, fighting Joker's Titan-powered henchmen (a fun all-out brawl where Batman kicked some serious ass in glorious slow-mo!) and finally trying to survive a frickin' no man's land where Poison Ivy had her snipers, mooks and weird plant thingies guarding the area.
From the few bits that I saw here's what I liked about Arkham Asylum. The game really captured the mood of Batman: The Animated Series while mixing in some stuff from Burton's and even Nolan's films. The setting of Arkham Asylum was gothic and creepy, and playing as Batman and watching the mooks' panicking reactions as you knock them out one by one is hilarious (not to mention Joker's radio transmissions which were surprisingly serious considering he's usually such a joking guy). The game favours a stalker approach, and nothing is more rewarding than overpowering a group of unarmed mooks by punching them out with kickass moves and using your wits to take care of e.g. seven heavily armed mooks one by one to even the odds while you get to hear Joker's increasing frustration. I also liked the detective mode and how the villains were so confident in their abilities to defeat Batman. It's very nice to crush their dreams as you beat them in their own game. The Scarecrow nightmare segments looked quite creative and truly nightmare-inducing (I mean, a giant Scarecrow trying to grab you with his needle-arms in an apocalyptic dreamscape platform *shiver*). I'm undecided whether the revamped look of the villains is a good or a bad thing: Harley Quinn looked quite weird in her stripper outfit, for example. Speaking of which, the voice actors were quite enjoyable and really hammed up their lines occasionally in a very enjoyable fashion.
What are the bad things, then? Well, what I didn't care for were the extremely clunky controls which seem to indicate that they were based on the console versions. I mean, should it really be that hard to make Batman squeeze through an air vent or make him abort a combo and get out of a monster's way in time rather than suffering a beatdown? Perhaps some updates will fix these controls but I wasn't happy about them at all. Seriously, is it really that hard to make a decent game for consoles and PC without making the PC controls a Pain In The Ass along the way? Sheesh. Then again, this seems to be the cardinal sin in every game that has both console and PC versions but hopefully, HOPEFULLY this issue will be solved in the near future. Overall Arkham Asylum looked like a very interesting game and I wouldn't mind trying it when it gets cheaper and I buy a computer that can actually run it (thankfully Jarkko's computer was very good in handling the game so I had a good idea of how the game works on a high-end system).
Speaking of media, I'm thrilled that I'll get to see The Princess and the Frog soon even though I'm somewhat worried about the Finnish dub. I hope it'll turn out as good as earlier dubs; after all, it has Laura Voutilainen voicing Tiana. I can't imagine Reino Nordin being a good Naveen but hopefully I'm proven wrong and the cast will make this as enjoyable as previous dubs have been. I'm very interested in how they handled the translation of the songs because some of the jokes in the songs are simply, well, untranslatable. It'll be fun to see a traditionally animated Disney film in cinemas after such a long period of time, and I hope the cinema will be packed (even though Disney hasn't really been advertising the film properly anywhere).
My other sister Marika bought me The Princess and the Frog OST while she was visiting New York City earlier this year. I've enjoyed listening to the OST, and it's nice to finally own a legal copy and thus support Disney that way. I do hope that someone will leak the academy promo sometime in the future because I'd like to hear the score tracks in proper chronological order and hear whether the additional score material is better than what's on the album. I also bought The Return of the King Complete Recordings at long last and now my trilogy of LotR complete scores is, well, complete. It's fantastic listening to the scores in Lossless form in true surround audio and hearing the huge choral interludes like "For Frodo" in glorious sound quality. Now I'll just have to wait for the eventual Rarities box set (which apparently has a lot of unreleased goodies from Howard Shore) and Doug Adams's promising The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films book. Perhaps we'll even get a glimpse on the actual orchestral and choral transcriptions? One can hope, right?
Also, I'm really impressed by the weather. It's been a long time since it's remained this cold for this long without snow melting and how there's so much snow. I really hope I can go skiing once I'm through with my upcoming exam.
Yours,
Mikko
I was happy to find out that I had aced both the theory-centred course on comparative literature and the interpreting course. I haven't received my grade for the popular genre course yet but I'm certain that I've passed that with flying colours as well. This is good news because my schedule simply doesn't allow me to have retake exams so I have to pass the exams with at least the grade 3 (5 being the best) with one go. As one can imagine, this means intensive studying which isn't necessarily a good thing. A good example is the 700-page theory book on the history of Finnish literature (Suomen kirjallisuuden historia by Kai Laitinen) which I need to finish by February 22. There are still a lot of pages to read and make notes about, and I have no idea if I have time to memorize everything from it because the content of this book is frickin' huge (after all, it goes from pre-1155 all the way to the late 1990s). Let's hope for the best.
Choir's been quite nice, and we've got surprisingly many new members. Sadly the tenor portion still has only us "old coots". It's a lot easier to lure guys to sing in bass register but tenors (especially those who are committed enough to stick around after one rehearsal) are very, very rare. It's kind of worse now that we have a shitton of new girls singing in both soprano and alto, and even with the increased members of bass it still means that guys are severely underrepresented. The good thing about it is that there are a lot of cute new girls around which means flirtin' time. Sadly I can't accompany the choir to Italy in late spring simply because they happened to choose to have the exact date when I have a lot of exams to plow through (and yes, these are the exams on Finnish literature, thankyouverymuch) but I'm sure they'll do fine without me being around. x)
Speaking of music, I was in Helsinki last weekend to attend the so-called Sibafest in the cathedral of Uspenski (the biggest Orthodox cathedral in Finland, and it was jaw-droppingly beautiful both inside and outside) where my sister Maarit was singing with the choir of the Sibelius Academy. They performed Sofia Gubaidulina's "Hommage à Marina Tsvetajeva" and Arvo Pärt's "Nunc dimittis". The former was an unnerving screech-fest (and I mean it) as it used a lot of atonal textures while trying to depict music-wise how Marina hangs herself (based on true-life events, sadly). It's art for sure but not the type of enjoyable listen that I crave to. The latter piece was much more beautiful (and conservative) as the big choir really made the religious and bittersweet theme (based on a section about Simon in the Bible) shine through. Overall the choir pieces were quite good and the conductor Matti Hyökki really made an effort to make it all work. Sis, her boyfriend Jarkko, mom, dad and I then returned to Tampere for the rest of the weekend and spent the time hanging around at sis's apartment.
Jarkko showed me a few bits from Batman: Arkham Asylum game which looked very interesting (it was great hearing Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy reprise their roles as Joker and Batman, respectively). The bits I saw was sneaking/stalking/fighting through a horde of mooks on the way to Killer Croc's lair (that lair was creepy, btw), escaping from the lair, going on a weird platformer acid trip thanks to Scarecrow's fear toxin, fighting Joker's Titan-powered henchmen (a fun all-out brawl where Batman kicked some serious ass in glorious slow-mo!) and finally trying to survive a frickin' no man's land where Poison Ivy had her snipers, mooks and weird plant thingies guarding the area.
From the few bits that I saw here's what I liked about Arkham Asylum. The game really captured the mood of Batman: The Animated Series while mixing in some stuff from Burton's and even Nolan's films. The setting of Arkham Asylum was gothic and creepy, and playing as Batman and watching the mooks' panicking reactions as you knock them out one by one is hilarious (not to mention Joker's radio transmissions which were surprisingly serious considering he's usually such a joking guy). The game favours a stalker approach, and nothing is more rewarding than overpowering a group of unarmed mooks by punching them out with kickass moves and using your wits to take care of e.g. seven heavily armed mooks one by one to even the odds while you get to hear Joker's increasing frustration. I also liked the detective mode and how the villains were so confident in their abilities to defeat Batman. It's very nice to crush their dreams as you beat them in their own game. The Scarecrow nightmare segments looked quite creative and truly nightmare-inducing (I mean, a giant Scarecrow trying to grab you with his needle-arms in an apocalyptic dreamscape platform *shiver*). I'm undecided whether the revamped look of the villains is a good or a bad thing: Harley Quinn looked quite weird in her stripper outfit, for example. Speaking of which, the voice actors were quite enjoyable and really hammed up their lines occasionally in a very enjoyable fashion.
What are the bad things, then? Well, what I didn't care for were the extremely clunky controls which seem to indicate that they were based on the console versions. I mean, should it really be that hard to make Batman squeeze through an air vent or make him abort a combo and get out of a monster's way in time rather than suffering a beatdown? Perhaps some updates will fix these controls but I wasn't happy about them at all. Seriously, is it really that hard to make a decent game for consoles and PC without making the PC controls a Pain In The Ass along the way? Sheesh. Then again, this seems to be the cardinal sin in every game that has both console and PC versions but hopefully, HOPEFULLY this issue will be solved in the near future. Overall Arkham Asylum looked like a very interesting game and I wouldn't mind trying it when it gets cheaper and I buy a computer that can actually run it (thankfully Jarkko's computer was very good in handling the game so I had a good idea of how the game works on a high-end system).
Speaking of media, I'm thrilled that I'll get to see The Princess and the Frog soon even though I'm somewhat worried about the Finnish dub. I hope it'll turn out as good as earlier dubs; after all, it has Laura Voutilainen voicing Tiana. I can't imagine Reino Nordin being a good Naveen but hopefully I'm proven wrong and the cast will make this as enjoyable as previous dubs have been. I'm very interested in how they handled the translation of the songs because some of the jokes in the songs are simply, well, untranslatable. It'll be fun to see a traditionally animated Disney film in cinemas after such a long period of time, and I hope the cinema will be packed (even though Disney hasn't really been advertising the film properly anywhere).
My other sister Marika bought me The Princess and the Frog OST while she was visiting New York City earlier this year. I've enjoyed listening to the OST, and it's nice to finally own a legal copy and thus support Disney that way. I do hope that someone will leak the academy promo sometime in the future because I'd like to hear the score tracks in proper chronological order and hear whether the additional score material is better than what's on the album. I also bought The Return of the King Complete Recordings at long last and now my trilogy of LotR complete scores is, well, complete. It's fantastic listening to the scores in Lossless form in true surround audio and hearing the huge choral interludes like "For Frodo" in glorious sound quality. Now I'll just have to wait for the eventual Rarities box set (which apparently has a lot of unreleased goodies from Howard Shore) and Doug Adams's promising The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films book. Perhaps we'll even get a glimpse on the actual orchestral and choral transcriptions? One can hope, right?
Also, I'm really impressed by the weather. It's been a long time since it's remained this cold for this long without snow melting and how there's so much snow. I really hope I can go skiing once I'm through with my upcoming exam.
Yours,
Mikko